Transatlantic Sketches in the West Indies, South America, Canada, and the United States

Preface

THE writer has called this book " Transatlantic Sketches," to indicate his sense of the slightness of the work he has undertaken. The more one travels the more does one become conscious of the incompleteness of the knowledge gained in anything short of long-continued residence in a country. The writer in his Sketches has aimed at truth and accuracy ; how far he has attained to these it is not for him to judge. For his account of Barbados alone he claims the merit of a photograph — a plain, true, ugly likeness of an ugly subject. The extreme fewness of reliable books of travel in the West Indies, and even in the greater part of the United States — a country full to overflowing of interest and instruction — will, it is hoped, excuse the appearance of this unpretending volume. In speaking of the United States and its people, the writer has been compelled to use the incorrect*

PREFACE.

. terms "America" and " the Americans." It is cha racteristic of the inhabitants of the parts comprised within the Union, that they arrogate to themselves the name which belongs to the whole Continent. In detailing anything likely to give an unfavourable impression of the Great Republic of the West, the words of native Americans have as often as possible been quoted, in order to avoid the appear ance even of prejudice, where no prejudice was felt. Where faults or failings are exposed, they have been exposed with the full conviction that they are the faults and failings of brothers, in whose well-being every member of the old English stock has a deep and living interest. PAGE C O !M T E N T S. Chapter I. ST. THOMAS. Islet of Sombrero — St. Thomas — Effects of the Hurricane ..'. I Chapter II.

DOMINICA. St. Eustacius — St. Kitts — Basseterre — Anglican Church — Roseau — Anglican Church in Dominica — Scenery — Tropical Forests — Mud Springs — Carib Indians — Upheaved Coral Reefs — Character of West Indian Scenery 7 Chapter III. MARTINIQUE. Hairless Dogs — Town of St. Pierre — The College — Serpents — Botanical Gardens — Port de France — Negress Servant-galism — Canal de Gueydon — French Colonization — Prize-giving at the College — Proficiency of the Mulatto Students — Island of St. Lucia — Castries — The Mome — Arrival at Barbados — Inhospitality - 19 Chapter IV. BARBADOS. Bridgetown — Streets — The Cathedral — Fontabelle — Worthing — Spike's Town — Austin's Town X CONTENTS. Chapter V. BARBADOS. DESCRIPTION OF THE ISLAND. PAGE Geology — Coralline Rocks — Gullies — Cole's Cave — Scotland District — St. John's Church — Ferdinando Palæologus — Codrington College — Aboriginal Antiquities — Coast Scenery — Shells — Fish — Reptiles — Birds — Insects — Plants — Fruits — Climate — Diseases — Hurricanes 36 Chapter VI.

BARBADOS. THE BLACK POPULATION. Settlement of the Island — White Slaves — Treatment of Negro Slaves — Prosecution of the Rev. W. M. Harte — Labour Question — Negro Shanties — Dress — Children — Disposition — Sobriety— Sensuality — Cruel Treatment of the Poor — Negroes in Church — Need of Division of the Services — Education — Lord Metcalfe on the Anabaptist Sect — African Names — Amusements — Marriages — Obeah 59 Chapter VII. BARBADOS. THE WHITE INHABITANTS. Physical Characteristics — Language — Conceit — Amusements — Newspaper Press — Militia Bill— Form of Government — Creole Ladies — Fear of the Negroes — Agriculture — Houses of the Planters — Religion — Poor Whites — Decadence of the White Race 84 Chapter VIII. BARBADOS. THE CHURCH AND RELIGION IN BARBADOS. Bishop Coleridge — Laxity — Horrible Immorality — Testimony of Rev. E. Pinder — Baneful Effects of the Appropriated Pew System — Erastianism — Codrington College — Fabric of the Churches — The Clergy — Church Services — Absence of Church Work — Question of giving up the West Indian Colonies CONTENTS.

XI Chapter IX. BRITISH GUIANA. PAGE George Town, Demerara — Scenery — St. George's Church — Double Establishment — Population — Coolies — Opium Dens — Treat. ment of Chinese — Arawak Indians — Alligators — The " Four eyes " — Scarlet Ibises — Berbice — New Amsterdam — Agriculture 121 Chapter X. TRINIDAD. The Bocas — Port of Spain— The Botanical Gardens — Schismatical Conduct of the Anglican Church — St. Joseph's — Island of Grenada — St. George's 135 Chapter XI. ST. VINCENT. The Pitons of St. Lucia — Kingstown — The Clergy — Calliaqua — Coral — Marriaqua Valley — Sculptured Rocks of the Yamboo and Layou Valleys — Colonarie — Charlotte Parish — The Carib Country — Ascent of the Souffriere — Ancient Crater — Form of Government 142 Chapter XII. GUADALOUPE. Basseterre — Grandeterre — Pointe-a-Pitre — Scenery 154 Chapter XIII.

VENEZUELA. La Guayra — The Club — City of Caracas— Cathedral — Soldiers — Politics of Venezuela — La Silla — Puerto Cavello — Colon 161 Chapter XIV. KINGSTON TO HAVANA. Harbour of Kingston, Jamaica — Santiago de Cuba — Gibara — Bahia de Nuevitas — San Fernando — Arrival at Havana CONTENTS. Chapter XV. HAVANA. PAGE Description of the City — The Cathedral — Tomb of Columbus — The University — Spanish Misrule — The Liberal Press Tirco Vasquez 1 78 Chapter XVI. HAVANA. Environs of the City— Characteristics of the Creole Inhabitants — Lottery — Volantes 185 Chapter XVII. NEW ORLEANS. " Portuguese Men-of-war " — Mouth of the Mississippi — Northern Officers — Position of New Orleans — Streets and Architecture — Episcopal Churches — Jesuit Church — Reticence of the People — The Levees — The Legislature of Louisiana — Negro Supremacy 191 Chapter XVIII.

NEW ORLEANS. Street-Cars — Paper Currency — Barracks — United States' Soldiers — Military Cemetery — Mardi Gras — " Mistick Krewe of Comus " — Firemen's Festival 204 Chapter XIX. EDUCATION IN NEW ORLEANS. Schools — The High School — Religious Question — Sunday Schools — Coloured Schools 214 Chapter XX. MOBILE— ALABAMA. Lake Ponchartrain — City of Mobile — Oysters — Indians — Magnolia Forest — Lawlessness of the People — Frequent Murders — Failure of Justice CONTENTS. XIII Chapter XXI. ASCENT OF THE MISSISSIPPI. PAGE The "Great Republic" — Baton Rouge — Vicksburg — Precocity of American Children — Napoleon — Memphis — Columbus — Cairo — Scenery of the Mississippi — Insecurity of Life and Property 227 Chapter XXII. ST. LOUIS AND CHICAGO. St. Louis — Unrivalled Position — Great Bridge — Description of the City — Laclede House — Ancient Mound — Characteristics of Western Men — St. Patrick's Day — American Toleration — ■ Fox-Hunt — St. Charles — Journey to Chicago — Description of the City — Episcopal Cathedral 237 Chapter XXIII.

CINCINNATI, PITTSBURG, AND BALTIMORE. Cincinnati — Picturesque Scenery — Pork Factories — Voyage up the Ohio — River Scenery — Wheeling— Petroleum Spring — City of Pittsburg— Church Guild — Dining and Sleeping Cars —Baltimore— The Bishop of Maryland 251 Chapter XXIV. WASHINGTON AND PHILADELPHIA. Washington— The Capitol— Lady Clerks— The White House- President Grant — The Patent Office — Museum of Military Surgery — Smithsonian Institute — " Red " Indians — Philadelphia — The State House — United States' Mint— Girard College 260 Chapter XXV. NEW YORK CITY. New York — Description of the City— The Battery — Trinity Church —Architecture — The Central Park — Staten Island — Poverty — Post-Office Administration CONTENTS. PAGE 283 Chapter XXVI. ALBANY, NIAGARA FALLS, AND BUFFALO. Albany— A Shaker— The Falls— City of Buffalo 278 Chapter XXVII.

CANADA. NIAGARA TO MONTREAL. Hamilton — Toronto — The University — Antiquities — Ottawa Government Buildings — Scenery— Falls of the Chaudiere Chapter XXVIII. CANADA. MONTREAL AND QUEBEC. Montreal — Description of the City — The Anglican and Roman Cathedrals — View from the Mountain — Caughnawaga — Iroquois Indians — Quebec — Wolfe's Monument — Canadian Politics 289 Chapter XXIX. FROM QUEBEC TO NEW YORK. Portland — Laws of Maine — Class Legislation — City of Boston — Bunker's Hill — The Northmen's Tower at Newport, Rhode Island — Providence — Hartford, Connecticut — The Puritans — Colt's Armoury — New England Scenery — Immorality of the People of New England 299 Chapter XXX. HARVARD, YALE, AND TRINITY, HARTFORD. Harvard College — University Expenses — Discipline — University Education — Failure of Protestantism — Religion at Harvard — Prize Recitations — Secret Societies — Yale College — Buildings — Chapel Sen-ices — Geological Lecture— Secret Societies — Boating — Trinity College — Bishop Seabury's Mitre CONTENTS.

XV PAGE 352 356 Chapter XXXI. WEST POINT. The Hudson River — Military Academy of West Point — Cadet Barracks — Rigid Discipline 330 Chapter XXXII. THE BALLOT IN THE UNITED STATES. New York Election Frauds— Failure of the Ballot to secure Purity in Elections — Universal Electoral Corruption — Statistics 337 Chapter XXXIII. TRAVELLING IN THE STATES. Expenses — Hotels — Food — Railway System — Steam-boats Chapter XXXIV. NOTES ON RELIGION. Protestantism — Failure of Puritanism — " Episcopal" Methodists — The Widow Van Cott — The Romanists — The Episcopal Church — Progress — Te Deum at Trinity Church — Statistics — Bishop Polk — Charge of Bishop Wilmer — Ritualism — Sunday School System — The American Prayer Book — Preaching Chapter XXXV. NOTES ON IRRELIGION. Disobedience to Parents — Profanity — Divorce — The Sorosis — "Moral New England" — Prevalence of Infanticide and Fœticide — Statistics — Shocking State of Morals 371 Chapter XXXVI.

THE FUTURE OF THE GREAT REPUBLIC. North and South — Tyranny of the Republican Party— Prostrate Condition of the South under Negro Rule — Imperialist Leanings — Probable Decadence of the Black Population 3S1 CONTENTS. PAGE 385 Chapter XXXVII. NOTES ON NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS. Englishness of the People — Exclusiveness — Kindness and Politeness to Englishmen — American Gentlemen — Flunkeyism — Defiance of Law — Respect of Persons — American Nomenclature — Class Legislation — American Women — Absence of Individuality — Tolerant Teetotallers — Superstition — Personalities of the Press — Cruel Treatment of Indians — Attitude towards England TRANSATLANTIC SKETCHES

Chapter I. St

THOMAS. Islet of Sombrero — St. Thomas — Effects of the Hurricane. Leaving Southampton on the 16th of October, 1867, we had a fair run across the Atlantic in the good steamship " Douro," and met with even fewer incidents than usual to dispel the monotony of the voyage. We grumbled at some dirty weather in the Channel ; we saw the Azores afar off by the lurid light of a stormy sunset ; we watched a few schools of porpoises or dolphins, and, when we reached warmer latitudes, rejoiced over the nights of beautiful flying-fish ; we got up two amateur concerts ; we ate, we drank, we slept ; and, notwithstanding the singularly agreeable company of passengers and officers, we — most of us at least — voted the voyage a bore. At length, early one morning, we sighted the Islet of Sombrero. Of course, as the first scrap of land, with the exception ST. THOMAS. of the distant Azores, which had met our eyes since we lost sight of the dear old Needles, and, above all, as the first fragment of the New World, Sombrero was a welcome sight.

But a nearer view showed it to be an object of little interest, — a mere shelf of rock of small size, scarce lifting itself up above the ocean. It boasts of no vegetation, and its only aboriginal inhabitants are a race of black lizards and a few sea birds ; but a valuable kind of lime is procured from some quarries, worked, or intended to be worked, by a passenger on board the " Douro." The resemblance of this skerry to a hat, Sombrero, is hard to discover, seeing that it presents a perfectly flat outline. Shortly after passing Sombrero, the Isle of St. Martin appeared in the distance on the left, and the afternoon found us steaming under the Virgen Gorda Islands, whose volcanic peaks, green-sloped and tufted with forests, presented a lovely picture to eyes wearied with the barren waste of waters and the prospect of the "mournful and misty Atlantic."

Watching the flying-fish as I reclined upon the bowsprit, I noticed a curious black inky appearance of the water, to which I called the attention of an officer, who, however, was unable to account for it. Shortly afterwards, behind a rock, the wreck of a steamer was descried, which some of the officers imagined they recognized, — only too truly as the event proved. The sky was blue, a soft warm breeze was blowing, and the sun shone brightly, as, about 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 30, the " Douro " turned into the long-wished-for harbour of St. Thomas. In a moment all on board perceived that some ter- EFFECTS OF THE HURRICANE. 3 rible catastrophe had occurred, for the smooth blue harbour and its green shores were a scene of the most frightful desolation and destruction. The town, whose houses line the end of a deep bay, and rise up the steep sides of three conical hills, in a fashion which carried my mind — alas ! not my body also — back to the Greek Isle of Syra, seemed to be half overthrown.

Upon the surrounding hills, man sions appeared unroofed, well nigh destroyed, or altogether ruined, with, in some instances, the timbers and stones of which they had been constructed stretching away from them in long lines of wreck. But worse than all was the appearance of the harbour itself. It was simply crowded with wrecks of ships, of which some had been hurled together in undistinguishable masses of cordage, timbers, and masts. Some ships were sunk in groups, some one above another ; some were cast high up on shore, some were bottom upwards. Others, which still floated, had lost all their masts and rigging. To the left lay a dismasted Spanish war-steamer ; to the right a large French steamer, with its funnel blown clean out of it, and hanging down over the side. The first shore-boat was slow in coming alongside ; but on its arrival we learned that the cause of all this ruin was a fearful hurricane which had taken place the previous day.

Had it not been for the rough weather over which we had grumbled in the Channel, the " Douro " would have arrived a day sooner, and would probably have been added to the long list of losses which had befallen the Royal Mail and other steamship companies. ST. THOMAS. 4 As soon as possible after coming to anchor I prepared to go ashore, but had great difficulty in persuading a companion to accompany me. The West Indians on board seemed, and rightly, to regard St. Thomas as, at the best of times, a very hotbed of pestilence ; but I thought that two or three hours' exercise upon terra firma after the voyage would be far better in a sanitary point of view than sitting on board amidst floating corpses. Winding about amongst the debris of ships, we approached the shore, when, observing the roof of some great edifice lying near the landing-place, I inquired whence it could have come from, as I saw no building near which it could have fitted.

The boatmen then showed me some roofless barracks, and told me that the roof in question had been torn off, whirled clean over the Castle, and then flung down on the rocks by the sea side. St. Thomas was the first Danish possession I had ever entered, but, with the exception of some somewhat seedy-looking soldiers in shabby blue uni forms, with red facings, I saw nothing characteristic of that gallant little country. Everywhere resounded the Negro, Yankee, and soft drawling West Indian varieties of the English tongue. Danish was " no where." The scene on shore that evening and next morning was certainly astonishing enough. All that the power of wind could do had, it seemed, been done. An avenue of tall cocoa-nut palms before an unchurchlike Lutheran church was destroyed, the huge and beautiful fronds, being either rent off, or torn into ribbons, hung down in long weepers.

Whole SCENE ON SHORE. 5 streets were blocked up with every kind of furniture, mingled with great stones, fragments of ships, timbers, and branches of trees. The top of one huge barricade was surmounted by half a piano, and a merchant's counting-house displayed a great hole, through which a ship's bowsprit had been driven— much to the dis comfiture of the clerk inside — by the great tidal wave which had accompanied the cyclone. In places by the sea-shore huge fires were burning, and beside these, dead bodies were being landed, nailed up in rude chests, and carried off for burial. A local Roman Catholic clergyman, amid the general paralysis, worked gallantly under the burning sun recovering bodies in the harbour. He manned a boat with some of his black sheep, went out with crucifix and holy water, and disputed with the sharks for the posses sion of the corpses.

The air of St. Thomas, as may be supposed, infected with the taint of dead bodies floating in the harbour, or concealed under the ruins, was anything but pleasant or healthy. In fact, St. Thomas is, under any circumstances, little better than a pest-house, and is seldom free from yellow fever. And yet, in spite of this, and in spite of con tinual losses of officers and men, the R. M. S. S. Company have persisted year after year in maintain ing it as the great packet-station of the West Indies. Such is British obstinacy ! Why the Americans should have wished to buy such a hole is a mystery, except it were with the view of annoying England. The shops were all open upon the day following the hurricane, but no business seemed stirring. Men were trying to clear the stores of accumulated rub- ST. THOMAS. bish, or opening passages up to their doors.

Groups of mourners and gossipers lined the streets. The most extraordinary stories of accidents and escapes were told. One man had been blown into the harbour together with the room in which he was sitting and drowned. Another was blown into the sea, half drowned, and then blown out again upon dry land and saved. The harbour-master was drowned, gallantly attempting to save life, and the captain of the Spanish war-steamer plied backwards and forwards, picking up the drowning, until the ship's masts went by the board, and swept him and a large proportion of the crew over board. Guns were overthrown in the fort, and one, it was asserted, was carried bodily across the harbour. There may have been exaggeration in some of these stories, but a more destructive hurricane to life and property has seldom or never occurred.

And yet this one took place when what is called the " Hurri cane Season " was over. Altogether, some twenty ships seem to have been lost, sunk, or dashed on shore. The Liverpool steamer, which had just come in, went down ; but, as one of her crew expressed it, " Every soul was saved, sir, including the pigs ! "

Chapter II. Dominica

St. Eustacius — St. Kitts — Basseterre — Anglican Church — Roseau — Anglican Church in Dominica — Scenery — Tropical Forests — Mud Springs — Carib Indians — Upheaved Coral Reefs — Character of West Indian Scenery. We left St. Thomas's late at night in the Tyne, which had escaped the hurricane, with the loss of boats, rigging, and foremast, and early next morning sighted the Danish island of St. Croix, and that of St. Martin, which belongs partly to the French and partly to the Dutch — a ridiculous instance of making two bites at one very small cherry. We then steered straight for Saba, whose lofty volcanic cone, truncated at the top, with St. Eustacius, another extinct volcano, behind it, presents a magnificent appearance. Saba rises in immensely steep slopes from the water's edge, and is green and beautifully fertile.

This islet belongs to the Dutch, and contains about 1,500 people, mostly belonging to the Anglican Church. The inhabitants bear a good character for industry. They are visited annually by the English Bishop of Antigua, but so great is the difficulty of landing, that his lordship has never effected it without a ducking. There is no resident clergyman, but the Dutch Governor holds DOMINICA. some sort of commission from the Anglican Bishop to read the Scriptures, conduct public prayer, and bury the dead. A queer kind of compact exists between the Bishop and the Methodist preachers of St. Eustacius, by which the former binds himself not to visit that island, if the latter keep clear of Saba — a provision rather cruel to the St. Eustacians ! The solitary Swedish possession, the Isle of St. Bart, next appeared in the far distance ; and the scenery as we approached St. Kitts, and saw the cloud capped volcanic mountain of Nevis behind, became continually more and more beautiful.

St. Kitts looks very pretty from the sea. A zone of rich cultivation runs round the island, sloping gradually upwards to a zone of forests, overtopped by the offsets and central peak of the volcanic Mount Misery. We reached St. Kitts a little before sunset, and, going ashore, I had time to explore the ruins of Basseterre, the capital and only town, which had lately been destroyed by fire. Here stood the one fine Anglican church of all the West Indian Islands. The shell alone is left, but this is enough to show that it had been a really noble and striking edifice, solemn, massive, well adapted to the climate, and thoroughly church-like in appearance. The architect was Mr. Christian. It is built of a dark reddish-brown stone, with a massive tower, nave, aisles, and chancel. The bells, stained glass, lectern, and, indeed, all the in ternal fittings, except a pavement of Minton's tiles, had fallen a prey to the flames.

Almost the only houses which escaped the conflagration were those cut off from the rest by a pretty public garden, where ST. KITT'S— ANTIGUA— GUADALOUPE. 9 a fountain plashing amidst bowers of sweet roses presented an unexpected, and certainly an un-English and un-Colonial, bit of civilization. St. Kitts, or St. Christopher, has its name from its great dis coverer, Columbus. The inhabitants, with true West Indian grandiloquence, call themselves " Kittipho nians," though " Kittens " might the better suit their insignificance ! Re-embarking at night, I woke next morning off English Harbour in Antigua, just in time to see the Bishop and his amiable family going ashore ; his lordship being then on his way back from the Anglican Synod at Lambeth. Antigua is less fertile and less beautiful than most of the other Lesser Antilles, consisting chiefly of dry, rounded hills, of no great elevation.

The capital, St. John's, I did not see, as it lies on the opposite side of the island. It boasts of a cathedral church, which, to judge from a picture, must strongly resemble a third-rate town-hall. Antigua is remarkable for one production only, its pineapples, which, especially the black variety, are delicious in the extreme. Leaving Antigua, we steamed away amidst multitudinous flights of silver-glancing flying-fish, and large schools of dolphins, and passing full in sight of lofty Nevis and cloud-capped Montserrat, whose outline, however, cannot for a moment compare with its majestic namesake in Spain, we crossed a beautiful sound, and coasted along the western shores of the French island of Guadaloupe. Here, again, the eyes are regaled with lovely pictures of mountain peaks, green and feathered with forests, with rich cultivation DOMINICA. below, and little villages, embosomed in groves of cocoa-palms, starting up from the coral-strewn strand.

Quarantine regulations prevented my landing upon this occasion on this lovely island, where the steamer merely stopped to land the mails. It was near 1 1 P.M. when I reached my destination. This was Roseau, the capital of Dominica, or Sunday Island, so called by Columbus because he discovered it on the Lord's day. I landed on a rotten quay, half ruined by a great ocean wave coincident with' the recent hurricane at St. Thomas's. A rumour of that catastrophe had already reached Dominica by a sailing-craft, and the quay was thronged by crowds of negroes and Creoles, all open-eared to hear the news. I was detained nearly half-an-hour giving an account of the scene of destruction I had witnessed ; and it was past midnight when I found myself en sconced in bed in a house of entertainment kept by an old black widow, who proved a kind-hearted and obliging person.

The house was built of wood, and was not particularly weather-tight, as I found to my cost during a tremendous shower of tropical rain which fell shortly before daybreak, The following morning, however, was fine ; and a blazing sun and blue sky set off to advantage the marvellously rich vegetation in which Roseau lies embosomed, and by which, indeed, it is partly overwhelmed. The town, or rather city, for it is the seat of a Roman Catholic bishopric, presents a curious picture of soft and gentle decay. The island being, in a financial point of view, well nigh ruined, trade has almost entirely deserted the capital. The houses, which are most of them ROSE A U. 11 mere wooden shanties, raised a little way from the ground upon stone piles, are either falling or fallen into decay, and the sites of many are overgrown with trees and brushwood.

The city was originally well laid out, with straight streets crossing each other at right angles, but, with one or two exceptions, they are now covered with grass, which is kept cropped beautifully short by sheep or goats, which pasture before their owners' doors. At intervals, majestic sandbox and other trees raise their gnarled trunks from the footways. A few general stores and merchants' offices upon the quay, and in one adjacent street, seem to engross all the business of the place : all else, saving only a noisy Methodist meeting-house, is as quiet as Venice. Saving only two venerable gigs, there are no wheeled carriages in the island. A soft melancholy seems to pervade the whole place. The very voices of the people struck me as being " low and sweet," and they have nothing of that whining drawl which is so trying in Barbados.

The inhabitants, whether Creoles or negroes, generally speak a French patois, and the half-castes of both sexes are comely in person and graceful in manner. There are very few unmixed English either in Roseau or elsewhere in Dominica. It is sad that the young men, white and mulatto, are without any kind of ra tional amusement. There are no public amusements of any kind, and very rarely any in private. The rector, seeing the harm of this, procured a supply of bats and balls, and set the young men to play cricket on the Savannah. They came a few times, and then gave it up. Then some one speculated in a billiard-table. DOMINICA. This, the usual resource of loafers, changed hands five or six times, and now remains unused and useless. The rector also obtained a supply of amusing books for a lending library, but, though they mainly belonged to the class of light literature, no one would borrow them.

There are no sportsmen, no botanists, no naturalists, no artists, and the result is a very low state of morality. But crime is rare ; and the con victs who are seen at work in the public streets are almost all poor fellows, whose laziness has caused them to shirk the statutable labour upon the tracks which do duty as roads. The politeness both of black and coloured people is remarkable, and entirely without that half-insolent, half-servile air, which after wards struck me as so offensive at Bridgetown. The Anglican Church is a deplorable building, but placed in an exquisite situation, shaded by cabbage-palms and overlooking the sea. Hard by, on the edge of the low cliff, is an old fort and a kind of meadow overshadowed by fine trees, and only wanting a few seats to make a very paradise for a tired wayfarer.

But Dominica is an English island, and therefore there are no seats. The Roman Catholic Cathedral is small and unobtrusive, but has an air of homeliness and well-usedness which is pleasant, although barricaded seats display the ill working of that bane of the West Indies, the pew rent system. Just between these two churches the Methodists have stuck their abortion of a meeting house, and the yells of these mouthy sectarians disturb the more reverent services upon either side. The Anglican rector of Dominica is the only English SELLING THE SACRAMENTS. 13 priest in the island. His school was attended by many children of Roman Catholic parents, but not long since a newly-arrived Romish clergyman drew them out by the powerful counter-attraction of a band of music, and only a small proportion ever returned.

It is instructive to an Englishman, who waxes so indignant at the Romish custom of selling the sacraments, to discover that the baptismal fees payable " according to law," though not according to Gospel, in the Anglican Church, amounts to no less a sum than eight shillings and five'pence, whereof seven shillings and threepence are decreed to the rector, and the rest goes to Mr. Yankey, the black sexton. The dues of the Romish clergy for the same sacrament amount to three shillings and sevenpence. This abominable custom of trafficking in the sacraments exists also in some of the other islands, as also it exists in St. George's, Hanover Square, and in " evangelical " speculations like that of Dean Boyd at Cheltenham. The market at Roseau, to turn to more legitimate traffic, is but poorly supplied with fish by reason of the great paucity of boats and fishermen, but fruit is brought in in great variety and abundance.