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January 16. The wind has us bottled up in this harbor, which Columbus spoke of as being able to accommodate the combined navies of the world.' One wonders if the dangerous, clawlike reefs enclosing the harbor can have been the origin of the name 'Cat Island'your mariner is an imaginative soul.

January 17.- Sailed this morning about eight bells, but the wind, blowing almost a gale, is dead ahead, and a heavy cross-sea is running in the channel. Have been able to make no headway and are anchored for the night under the lee of Long Island - the Fernandina of Columbus's log.

January 18. The storm has abated, and we are well on the way to Rum Cay. Just now we are sailing past the island which Columbus called 'Isla de Santa Maria de la Concepción.' It is a beauteous spot: one large, uncut emerald, tossed in a bowl of opals.

January 19.- Port Nelson, Rum Cay. Old Mr. R- was on the wharf

to

to bid us welcome. His hair and beard have known no barbering for a whole twelvemonth. He must return Nassau on the yacht, for ill health has ended his labors in this strenuous climate. He is much upset about it, and declares he can carry on. His small and oh! so dilapidated rectory is very pathetic-one hen nesting on the pantry safe, and another in a box on the chest of drawers in his bedroom. His kitchen - always a small, separate building in this climate was blown away in a recent hurricane; there was no money with which to construct another, so cooking is done on a box filled with sand and ashes, in the open. The reverend gentleman complains much of fleas. I can well believe it, for on his own admission he is too worn out to bother about having the place cleaned.

VOL. 137- NO. 6

January 22.- Our stay at Rum Cay was brief. There are few Church people there now, so many hundreds have left the island to migrate to Miami, Florida. We returned with a fair wind to Arthur's Town. The excitement of arrival is over and we are settling into some sort of routine. The furniture a truly florid compliment in that name is unpacked. . . .

We

Hourly I am learning joyful, surprising, and disquieting facts about the island. There are some five thousand inhabitants, all black, scattered in more than two dozen settlements strung out on this side of the island. This side faces the west and is on the Exuma Sound; the other side is exposed to the roll of the Atlantic, have churches in ten of these settlements, which must be visited regularly and as often as possible. We shall both have to have horses, and I can see that a boat would be useful. Arthur's Town seems to be the largest of the settlements. It is built along two main roads. The beach, just a few yards from my door, seems to be the most attractive thing about it.

January 25. Elijah Campbell came in this evening and we pumped him for information about life on the island. The people eke out a bare existence from the rocky and unfertile land. Soil, as everywhere in the Bahamas, is found only in the potholes in the honeycomb rock, as this coral formation is locally called. Fields are found chiefly on the east side of the island, and some produce will grow in the sand which washes inland in the hurricane season and from which the salt is finally washed by the rains.

Money comes in chiefly from the sisal industry. The broad green leaves of the plant, often more than four feet long, are cut in a peculiar way called 'stripping,' and soaked for weeks in the shallow swamps that lie all along the

centre of the island. When the pulp has completely decomposed, the fibrous remains are beaten on the rocks to cleanse them, and then bleached in the sun. Baled, the fibre is shipped to Nassau for export abroad, where it is made into rope and binder twine.

We discussed the food problem, which looms up in an alarming way. Vegetables are scarce, and of a limited variety. No effort has been made to increase the variety grown, and potatoes, yams, cassavas, and eddo roots seem to constitute the chief diet of the native. An inferior corn is grown, which is ground into a coarse meal. The peculiar lay of this island makes fish scarce at the north end, though I suspect the natural laziness of the natives has somewhat to do with that also. Fresh meat, Elijah tells us, will be available perhaps twice monthly; then only mutton. I do not like that 'perhaps.' Everyone seems thoroughly contented with conditions, which seem to us so very primitive. It is the kind of content that is devastating to any kind of progress.

January 27. Saw a yacht coming in this morning, and became quite excited over the prospect of our first news from the outside world. It turned out to be Major O, the magistrate, arriving to hold a court of inquiry over an alleged shooting case. S was asked to sit on the bench with the Major and listen in. The verdict was 'accidental.'

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a letter. We were kept busy all day with requests to read their letters to them. Most of their mail seems to come from relatives in Miami, and they usually enclose a dollar bill, which is always eagerly pounced upon. Poor people they see so little ready money! February 6. - The faithful assembled to rebuild part of our garden wall, which seems to have been carried off, stone by stone, when there was no one in residence here. About sixty persons turned up, men, women, and children. They gathered stones from waste land hereabout, and toted them in on their heads. They carry all their burdens this way. Sunday a woman who lives afar turned up at church with her shoes balanced on her head. She had apparently found them painful on the long walk, so put them on at the church door. The wall itself looks quite fine, and will serve us as a protection against the horses, pigs, and fowls that have been constantly wandering about our garden.

February 7.-S left in the Silver Palm for the Bight. He will visit, en route, Knowles and Smith Bay. I have a feeling that this tour from settlement to settlement will subdue the restlessness that seems inevitable.

February 8.-Watched a crowd of some twenty persons, beside the crew, go off for Nassau in a small sloop, not more than twenty-five feet over all. A dangerous number on such a tiny craft. Although this is the usual means of interisland travel, I am told that they carry little food or water, and never know just when they will reach their destination. Sometimes they take seven days to do the hundredmile trip, and have to put in at various cays on the way to get food and water.

Later, walked over to the east side of the island with the local policeman.

It is truly beautiful there: long, wide beaches of pinky-white sand, as fine as sugar, all fringed with sea-grape bushes, with their round green and red leaves, and tall coconut palms, from which we gathered nuts and drained them of their milky nectar to quench our thirst. Coming back, Baker, who had taken his gun on the chance of a shot at the wild pigeons, stopped to adjust his trigger-guard. The gun went off as I was walking directly into the line of fire. A second or so more and I might have been 'done.' February 10. Visited Creek in a small sailboat. The Creek is the most charming spot on the island. The church stands on a slight rise, overlooking the bay, and the priest's lodge nestles near by in a grove of tall coconut palms. Alas, the church is in terrible disrepair, and dear old Joshua C, the catechist, seems too far gone to do much work. I made him take the service, to see just how he did it, and he convulsed me by expectorating solemnly out of the window during alternate verses of the Psalms. . .

Orange

February 12. Medical cases are coming in thick and fast, now that these people have found out that we have a case of drugs and a willingness to help. I feel keenly the lack of medical knowledge, though they all profess great faith in me, and that is half the battle. They all diagnose their ills in exactly the same way. No matter what they are suffering from, it is always: 'Please, sir, could n't you give me one pills?' When I try to find out where and what the ache is, they always say, 'Got a kinda bearin'-down feeling, Fader.' Poor folk! They have never had a doctor on the island, and must cure all their ills with their own concoctions, made from herbs and bush. Some of the old folk seem quite adept at this; their nostrum is 'gale-o'-wind

bush.' I imagine it has the effect on the system that the name implies. Usually cuts and wounds are treated very casually. Their whole system of living, their ideas of ventilation and sanitation, are at least a thousand years behind the times.

February 13.Attended the Acting Commissioner's court this morning. What a farce! Is this the majesty of empire? A man with no education, no idea of law, no qualifications whatever, but with only an inflated opinion of himself, dispenses justice (?) to these poor ignorant people. It is to be hoped that the white Commissioner promised will soon turn up. But this man now acting is also the schoolmaster here, and every day holds sway over some hundred and fifty youngsters. The whole educational system on these outlying islands is deplorable.

February 14.- Embarked in the Silver Palm for the Bight at 12.30 P.M. Wind very light; fell away entirely at sundown, when we were still about four miles from Knowles. We had to scull in, and reached here by 8.30 P.M. I was regaled with a dish of pancakes and the inevitable mess of corn meal, cooked very stiff, and nothing to send it down with. It all speaks of the poverty of the islanders.

February 15.- Tripped before dawn with a fresh wind on our quarter, and made the Bight by noon. Mr. Wthe colored Commissioner, and the local policeman were on the wharf to welcome me. Mrs. W- sent in a large tray of dinner, for which I was very grateful, especially to see their kind

ness

even a vase of flowers on the tray. In the evening Mr. W- came in, and we talked long on the color question and the crying needs of the island. He is an exceedingly well educated colored man. The rectory here, having always been headquarters, is a much more livable place than at

Arthur's Town. The garden is quite beautiful and shows the labor that my predecessor put into it. Saw the grave, still unused, which he had prepared when he thought he was going to die. Perhaps I may be the one to use it, after all.

February 17. Good congregation out this morning. Later took horse to the Old Bight. The animal was very frisky and shied at something suddenly, throwing me off, but fortunately with no hurt to myself. The church at the Old Bight is the largest and barest in the island. It was built in memory of some member of the Balfour family who was here in the old slave days, by his relatives in England.

One girl in the front bench amused me much by singing:

'Joyfully for Him to die

Was not death but vic-to-rye.'

During service the tide had risen in the creek, and I got wet above the waist, fording it on horseback. Preached again in the evening, and concluded that three sermons a day are a wearying duty when mixed up with a long ride in the hot sun.

February 29. Spent the day dynamiting in preparation for some gardening. In the evening gave a 'filling-in' party. Promised refreshments to all who would come and tote sand from the beach, to fill the holes we had made. The promise brought about two hundred people of all ages. The work was done in about two hours and then we stopped for refreshments, which consisted of flour cakes and swichil, a much relished native drink, made from limes and peppermint, sweetened with brown sugar, and colored with 'cochineal' from the pod of the cactus plant. After 'eats' they made a huge fire on the public square, and danced to the music of their own voices and of a drum, made by covering a lard tub

with a sheepskin, drawn very tight and heated. The songs are all native made, and sung to tunes that reek of the African jungle. They work themselves up to a wild fury in the dance, scream, clap their hands ceaselessly, and contort themselves in wild, sinuous, and graceful movements, unlike anything one would expect in the Western Hemisphere. Their latent barbarism comes out to the full in these 'fire dances.'

March 29. Returned to-day from a brief visit to Nassau, where one gorged one's self on good food and much conversation. Managed to find time to beg enough money to repair at least one church. Fairly squandered my quarter's pay on all sorts of stores to bring back. Will have to get used all over again to doing without meat, ice, fresh butter, milk, and so on. The voyage back on the mail boat was awful. Left on Thursday night, but the crew were too drunk to get farther than East End, so we had to anchor and wait for the dawn, while they slept off their stupor. Sailed all day Friday against a heavy northeaster and in torrents of driving rain. There were nine colored women and four babies in the one small cabin, all of them beastly seasick, so I kept on deck despite the storm. The cook did his best to give us food, but it was a poor best. The wind shifted suddenly to the south about four bells in the afternoon, and we were bucking a heavy cross-sea in the passage. The captain held out little hope of being able to land at Arthur's Town, where we have no decent harbor, but he was kind enough to put in for the night behind the lee of Powell's Point, Eleuthera. Once inside the reef, it was calm, and there was still enough light for some of the crew to dive for conchs, which we enjoyed in a stew for supper - our first real meal of the day. Many lines were cast after the sun had set,

and I was fortunate enough to hook a large shark. It required five of us to pull him in and he put up a wonderful fight. We finally got him alongside and shot him

took seven bullets to finish

him off. When we hauled him on deck, we measured his length at seven feet, three inches.

This morning it was still squally, with a heavy sea running in Little Island Passage, but the captain, a seasoned mariner, did his best and landed me here about 3 P.M. They brought me off in a small boat. We could not attempt to land at the wharf, as the heavy seas that were rolling in would have dashed the boat to pieces. They ran her for the beach, where a great crowd had collected. As the curling breakers caught the boat and hurled her toward the beach, the men from the shore ran out to meet us and, picking me bodily from the boat, carried me, quite dry, to land. But alas! all my clothes and stores have had to go on to the Bight.

March 31. Called to Dumfries, four miles away, to remove a bead from a small girl's ear. She was in mortal fear of 'de vite man,' and three men had to hold her, that I might operate. She cried, screamed, and swore at me in a most putrid vocabulary. It was not until she had completely exhausted herself and could no longer struggle that I was able to remove the bead. The mother has promised to send in a fowl as a sort of payment. Poor as they are, they always try to show their gratitude with some gift. It is very touching.

April 6. Hit upon a way to-day that I think will put a stop to this silly habit the women and girls have of daubing their faces with white powder. They have no idea how ludicrous they look with a great spot of white plastered on black cheeks, chins, and fore

heads. Have spoken about this often with no effect, so to-day, after vesting, I got one of the boys to fetch a bit of coal and bedaubed my own face with black. Naturally when I appeared in church they could not contain themselves and roared with laughter. I bade them see how absurd a white face looked painted black, and tried to make them see that their black faces look just as ridiculous all whitened. Some of the men assure me that the lesson has sunk home.

April 8.- Visited old James Twho is laid up with an infected foot. Suggested that he might like some magazines to look at, but he indignantly informed me that he 'got one book. Fine book, all about 'Arry Matthews an' de quail.' He seemed much surprised that one whom he called 'Man o' God' should not have heard of this book. He insisted on struggling to his trunk and producing it. I was amused to discover that it is The Story of Joseph of Arimathea and the Holy Grail.

April 12. The worst accident of all to-day. A man and boy nearly blown to bits, dynamiting fish on the other side of the island. It happened about 9 A.M. and news did not reach the settlement until about 1 P.M. They had been lying in agony for four hours. I had the horses saddled and hurried off to render first aid. Adderly, the man, has his right arm completely shattered and is covered with minor cuts and abrasions. Farrah, the boy, is worst injured about the eyes, which were packed with sand from the explosion. His chest and head are covered with tiny cuts made by flying sand. Managed to bring Farrah in on horseback, but had to improvise a stretcher for Adderly. The ten-mile journey back was awful, over rocky roads which are barely footpaths through the bush. He screamed with pain at every jolt, and

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