With so many vessels arriving daily from all parts of the globe, it would be strange if no incidents worthy of note transpired, though in these unromantic days the sea has little more of the unusual to offer than the land. Nevertheless here are two stories, simple in themselves, but out of which more than one charming tale might be constructed.

On the tenth of May, a year or two ago, the barque "Crescent" arrived at Barbados. Just one hundred and thirty-seven days before, she had left the Puerto Arena. Soon after starting, the terrible disease known as "berri-berri" had developed on board and spread like wildfire. All the crew-ten souls-took the contagion; three died on the voyage; three in the Harbour of Bridgetown; two landed ill and were cured in the quarantine hospital on Pelican Island, where all arrivals from suspected ports are detained; the remaining two men took the disease lightly. But when the ill-fated ship came at last into harbour, after her fourteen weeks' beating to windward under the scorching tropical sky, not a man on board was strong enough to go aloft and furl the sails; they had just strength enough to drop the anchor, with topsails standing, and wait for help.

Four days previous to this, the barque "Crown Prince" had arrived from Rio de Janeiro. Her crew consisted of fifteen men, she being a fine and well-found vessel of nine hundred and seventy tons burthen. On the nineteenth day of her voyage every man on board was stricken with yellow fever, which had developed shortly after they left Rio. The captain and five men were dead, and only the steward, one man, and a boy were able to crawl on deck and navigate the ship. In this desperate condition they sighted a Swedish vessel and made signals of distress. On learning their unhappy state, the first officer of the Swede and a Swedish sailor most nobly volunteered to go on board that floating hell and take her into Barbados. It was almost certain death-more certain than the veriest forlorn hope of the battlefield-and the men for whom they sacrificed themselves were not even of their own nation. The "Crown Prince" reached her destination safely, but both the heroic volunteers took the fever; the seaman died, the mate, with care, recovered.

The local papers of Barbados gave him a word of praise, and that was all. Yet many a brave man who wears

the Victoria Cross on his breast might well have shrunk from the task that this simple sailor had accomplished.

For that awful yellow fever is the curse of the West Indies; but for it, or rather but for the fear and the dread of it, Barbadcs might well be considered the healthiest place on earth. Twelve degrees Fahrenheit is the whole range of its temperature, summer and winter; the soil is a pervious coral rock through which the heavy rainfall percolates, washing out every pore and crevice, and the life-giving "doctor," the north-east trade wind, blows over the island day and night. It is a climate where the old renew their youth, and where children flourish like the vegetation around them. But, spite of quarantine, and spite of Royal Engineers and modern sanitation, all who dwell there know that some day or other the fatal news may be whispered that Yellow Jack is abroad. Whispered it will be at first, for the colonists hate the word, and are sure to tabulate the first cases as typhoid fever or liver disease, or, in short, anything but what it is. But soon facts will defy them, and the word at last go forth that another epidemic is in their midst.

Then will come a rush for the mail steamers by those whom no duty calls to remain, and then the funeral processions to the garrison churchyard, and the rows of graves therein, the inscriptions of which make even the careless solemn for a while as they read how such an one lost his wife and two children within the space of four days, and such another wife her husband, and how such an officer, just beginning his career, died eight days after landing in the plague-stricken island. In the old days we left our troops to die or live as they could, but now a better spirit prevails. In the last yellow fever epidemic at Barbados, when the men and officers began to die like flies, we shipped the whole garrison back to England, and thereby saved many a valuable life. This was in the autumn of 1881, ten years ago. There has been no visitation since, and, of course, in the opinion of most of the colonists, there never will be another. Let us hope that their confidence will not be misplaced.

We have wandered a long way from the view we were just now admiring, but this paper pretends no attention to the "unities," only to be a record of scenes and observations as they may happen to

strike the mind of the observer. Now the sparrows have finished their last crumb, and the fleet of fishing-boats is out of sight behind the silk cotton-tree (bombax ceiba), we will return to our window.

That ceiba is the largest tree in sight, and we should be ungrateful to dismiss it without a word. Just now it is covered only with fresh green leaves, but later on it will bear a crop of thousands of long pods, like green rolls, each filled to bursting with the softest and most delicate of fibres-real silk-cotton. About the month of April these pods will begin to open, and then the air will be full of fleecy white flakes, like a snowstorm, every flake bearing a round black seed in search of some favourable soil. To us these seeds are a source of annoyance, for the cotton that envelopes them is the very thing of all others for stuffing cushions, but takes an interminable time to clean of the seeds. I have heard that in the old slavery days in America, before the application of ma chinery to the raw material, it was a day's work for a woman to clean a pound of cotton, and I can well believe it.

The sun shines brilliantly, but away to the eastward is a dark cloud. I have scarcely had time to notice this fact when a gust of wind rattles the shutters, and is followed by what in England we should call a smart thunder shower, only here there is no thunder, and the thirsty ground absorbs the deluge as it falls; so that ten minutes after the rain is over there is no trace left of its having fallen at all, save a few large drops of water on the great leaves of the bananas, and a smell of fresh earth rising through the open windows.

Now is the time for a walk or a ride; but I, being lazy, take a book, and lie down again inside the mosquito curtains, where I can enjoy in safety an hour's luxurious reading, whilst the cool breeze blows over the bed. Our room has seven windows, and all are open, night and day. In this clime one can lie on a couch all night, with half a gale of wind fluttering the sheet, and take no harm. But you must have your curtains, for the West Indian mosquito is a wary and most intelligent insect, and the little drop of poison that he ejects through his proboscis, when he has made a hole in your skin, has a most irritating effect, and one that lasts for days. He loves a new comer, fresh from England, and, to gain his object, displays a knowledge of tactics

which I have often admired. Before retiring to rest you most carefully make the circuit of your curtains. Nothing is to be seen. You go to bed, with candle lighted, prepared for a last perusal of your book before you go to sleep. Presently a shadow of evil omen crosses the page, and you know that your enemy has found you. You make a dart at him, clapping your hands together in hopes of enclosing him between them, but in vain. He has vanished like a dream, and-now he knows that you are after him-you will see him no more. Safely ensconced beneath the bed, he will return no more till the light is out and you are peacefully asleep. Next morning you will awake to find two or three red spots of intolerable irritation on your exposed hand or foot, and, looking up, will see your tormentor, swollen to twice his usual size, asleep on the gauze. Easy enough he will be to kill now, and an ugly mark of your blood he will leave behind him on the white curtain.

But now it is time to dress for breakfast, and to go over to the office. As I sit there signing papers, I can see from the window a curious scene.

A great bearded fig-tree has died, from poverty of soil and the long drought, and the Royal Engineers have sent a party to cut it down, the said party consisting of three negroes and a black overseer with a grey beard. For tools they have a crosscut saw and a pickaxe with its head loose. After a great deal of talk, operations are begun. One man sits upon the ground and grasps a handle of the saw; his fellow-worker kneels. The saw, in consequence, bends like a bow, and is pulled through the wood by a great expenditure of strength. Fortunately the timber is pretty rotten.

Overseer-after a long meditation."You, Davis, you no see you cutting crooked? Take out saw."

Davis grins and withdraws the saw, showing a slanting cut half-way through the stem of the tree, which bids fair to end in the ground eventually, if prolonged. The overseer walks round and round the tree, muttering to himself, whilst his three workmen pass a bottle to each other and refresh themselves.

Overseer." You bring saw round this

side."

No reply.

to work on the side towards which the tree leans. The two men working it take a few languid cuts and stop. The overseer dances with rage and waves his stick. "You go on. What you stop for? Go on," with a shriek. "See, Captain coming out of his office."

The men grin and make a few quick cuts. The tree leans over a little and jams the saw tight; hereupon all jump up and gesticulate, and finally all four take hold of the handles and wrench the unlucky instrument out, minus some of its teeth. This sobers them a little, and they recommence at the right side of the tree again. Presently there is a slight crack of a fibre of the wood, whereupon the sawyers jump up and fly for their lives. The overseer dances about, and inveighs against their cowardice. At last he prevails on them to begin again. Another crack is heard. One man lets go his sawhandle so suddenly that the other falls over, and yells:

"What for you want to kill me, and me father seven small children?"

Peace is restored; vain efforts are made to upset the tree by the use of the pickaxe in the saw-cut. Finally the overseer forces two of his best labourers to go on with the sawing, threatening them with the most severe penalties if they stop for an instant. After a few more panics a gust of wind catches the high branches and the great trunk falls majestically, amidst a chorus of:

"Dat a good job." "We do that well," etc. The overseer salutes proudly, and the proceedings terminate.

A lower race than the whites these negroes undoubtedly are, but a far happier one. Probably, in the West Indies, they are the happiest people in the world. Perpetual sun and warmth, little or no work, clothes that cost a few pence, houses that can be run up or taken down in a day, food and drink in abundance-all these added to a mind that is never troubled by introspection or by dread of the future, spiritual or temporal, make the lot of the negro an enviable one in its way; but his Utopia is not, and never can be, the white man's.

In Barbados the chief enemy of the black race is consumption, of which many of them die, though it is practically unknown here amongst Europeans. The cause is simply that all negroes, without exception, hermetically seal up their huts

at night, partly from fear of mysterious ghosts or "duppies," partly to keep out mosquitos, and partly again because they wish to keep out cold.

For, strange as it may appear, the naturalised West Indian negro shivers in a temperature of seventy-four degrees, and, on the rare occasions in winter when the thermometer falls to seventy degrees, he is blue with cold and almost incapacitated from work. No doubt he is warm enough in his hut at night, with every shutter closed and every chink and cranny stuffed with rags, but nature avenges herself for this exclusion of her purifying oxygen by colds and coughs. The negro has quack remedies and balsams by the dozen for these, but they do not save him from the tubercle that soon forms in his lungs and eats his life away. After all, he is little missed; he has had a short life and a pleasant one. His relatives will feel a pride in covering themselves with crape, of colour almost as black as their own complexions, for crape is "de rigueur amongst the negresses of Barbados. He will probably leave after him six or seven children, mostly illegitimate, since the black ladies have strong objections to the bond of matrimony. But here the question of pounds, shillings, and pence does not intrude itself as it does at home. It costs so little to bring up a black baby that there is really no reason whatever for its parents to consider the future. When it grows up, an hour's work or so a day will keep it in clothes and food. So, in the streets of Bridgetown, the happy little black imps swarm like flies, and the island has the densest population per square mile of any place in the known world, that is, if what they say about Chinese statistics be true.

"

Correspondence is not very heavy here, as the mails from home and from the outlying islands only arrive and depart once a fortnight. So we will leave the office and take a stroll in the garden before luncheon. It is decidedly hot-eighty-six degrees in the shade, and very little shade to be had. Under the tamarind-trees the land-crabs are slowly crawling, and dragging the fallen fruit into their holes, which are as large and as numerous as those of a rabbitwarren. Quite as shy of man as any English rabbit are the old and wary patriarchs of the crustacean colony, with their brown shells, their great claws, and their weird, rugged, and ungainly shape. At the first sound of my footstep there is a

quick scurry for the holes and a rapid dive into them. The inherited instinct of many generations has taught them that the negro loves their flesh-and the white man, too, on occasion, though the latter prefers to "scour" them first by a judicious feeding on corn-meal, since he knows that the taste of his victim in the matter of "fleshmeat" is peculiar and not at all particular. Hunting crabs at night with a lantern, a fork, and a sack, is the delight of the black boy, and in the excitement of the chase he is not particular as to trespassing, as I have found to my cost, by getting my young banana plants trampled down.

The smaller crabs, from one inch to three or four in breadth, are not much afraid of man. Their colour is a most brilliant red, brighter than that of a boiled lobster; and they swarm everywhere-in the house as well as out of it. We have a kitten, and, the other day, she came limping into the room. I examined her and found a small crab-claw holding on to each of her fore-feet. She is fond of teasing crabs, and evidently one of them had resented her attentions by catching her first by one foot, and then by the other put down to release herself. The claws have a very curious faculty of holding on tightly, even when cast off by their owner; and we had considerable difficulty in releasing

poor pussy.

Little green humming-birds hover in the grass, and shoot up again into the tops of the trees. They can enjoy life here on very easy terms, since every bush, shrub, and tree has a flower full of scented honey. Yonder is the most beautiful tree in Barbados, if not in the world, just coming into bloom. Here they call it the flamboyant"; in India it is known as the "gold mohur-tree." It is a "poinciana." No words can describe the gorgeous richness of its flowers. When it is in blossom, it can be seen for miles-a living mass of orange-crimson. Could such a tree be made to flower in England as it does here, people would come from all parts of the kingdom to see it.

There are no seasons, practically speaking, in Barbados, and the effect on vege tation is curious. The trees never seem to know exactly whether to make it summer or autumn. Often you may see, on the same tree, leafless branches, flowers, and ripe fruit. Here, on this poinciana, amongst the mass of blossom, you can discover great pods, two feet long and three inches across. Open one and it will dis

close a row of long, narrow seeds, almost cylindrical in shape, and each carefully stored in its own separate and distinct partition, like boys in a school dormitory.

Here is a tall stem, to climb which the said schoolboy would find a difficult task. It is covered with thorns as high as the eye can reach, and is as unapproachable as a wall with broken glass on it. Had the rooks and magpies of home lands such a place to build in, how they would rejoice. It is the sand box-tree (hura crepitans), and its queer spheroidal, crumpled fruit is extensively used here, filled with lead, as a paper-weight. It makes a very handsome one, and, in this clime of open doors and windows, he who attempts to write without something to secure his papers, will certainly repent it.

I would fain go on to describe some other of the strange trees here; but after all, they are all strange to an English eye, and a book would be required to do them justice. So, as it is now close on lunch time, we will leave the garden to the landcrabs, and carry in the basket of roses, Cape jasmine, and gardenia, which will serve to fill the vases for the afternoon, and can then be thrown away. Here our costly hothouse flowers are almost weeds, and an English primrose would be of more value-could it be grown-than a Eucharis lily.

HISTORIC EPIDEMICS.

WE may sincerely hope that the "influenza" epidemic, from which Europe is now suffering, is not destined to be widely "historic." It has done mischief enough, it has left many notable blanks in the "fighting line" of civilisation and progress, and brought grief to many a family and home; but it has not yet reached a height of evil that gives it a title to rank with the great epidemics which at one time or other have wrought destruction on mankind. The "tale" of these is sufficient, and although we can scarcely venture to hope that great pestilences are things altogether of the past in civilised lands, yet we may have some confidence that our sanitary organisation, defective as it may be, will enable us to limit and control them. But we may be sure, from the experience of the past, that where want and misery exist among considerable masses of population thickly crowded together, pestilence in some of its forms is sure to follow.