mists and lights up the masts, and the rigging, and the ensigns. But in the railway carriages people are not thinking much about what is to be seen. It is about Jack they are talking, who sails to-day for Singapore, and about Ellen whose husband is a fireman on the Ducal line, and who went to meet the steamer her husband should have been aboard, and found "they'd left him behind at the 'orspital" at Bombay. clamber on board anyhow, and their kits, in round canvas bags, are pitched in after them. The crew in general are hauling at this and that, with cheerful heave-hos. Here is a smart young steamship hand, who exchanges last words with a grizzled old salt of a father on board, and arranges to meet him in Melbourne; and there is young Hopeful perched in a corner of the poop, surveying the scene with a rather melancholy air. But Hopeful's face brightens up as he sees his friends among the crowd, and he hurries along to help them on board. They cross the bridge perilous, and pass down into the waist of the ship, all littered with things shoved on board at the last moment It is freezingly cold in the long railway carriages open from end to end, and warmed only by the glowing pipes of the male passengers; it is still colder by the dock side, where icicles hang from masts and yards, and a powdering of feathery frost particles. The wind whistles round-stores for the cook and hampers for the the corners of sheds, and the dark waters shiver as it passes. As for the ship of which we are in search, she has left the berth where she was taking in cargo, another ship occupies her place, and her tall masts and tapering yards are no longer visible. But everybody you meet knows where she is. "She's in the basin, she is, and you'll have to be sharp, for she's off this tide." we come steward, with ropes winding here and there, and rigging flapping above. Here are strings of cabbages, and there nets of potatoes; cocks crow, fowls cluck; here rout the pigs, and there huddle sheep in silent dejection. both to the calls upon her attention and the apparent hopelessness of getting things straight. The sleeping cabins are neat and snug enough, where passengers have begun to make their little arrangements for a three months' voyage, and the saloon has a tranquil appearance compared with the general bustle, for the captain and the owners are settling the ship's accounts and taking a glass of wine together for good luck. Here comes the steward, a Chinaman, with a face like a lanthorn, yellow and transparent. "Not me talk nobody, but presently;" and the stewardess, also of the It is a good long walk to the basin, and yellow race-perhaps she is Mrs. Ah Sing not the best walking in the world with-is in an equally distracted state, owing hawsers stretched across the pathway, and anchors and chain cables encumbering the ground, and iron mooring-rings to trip over, and here and there a glissade of ice or a patch of snowy particles; and after walking what seem to be miles, across a railway line with a little station hard by, which, if we had known of it, might have saved us all the tramp. But here is the basin at last, and our ship, with her four tall masts and heavy spars, and such masts and yards as you don't often see now, or anyhow take notice of. She is iron as to the hull, and of two thousand odd tons burden, and she has got a full cargo on board, so that she lies pretty low in the water, although poop and foks'l rise well above the dock side. Her gangways are drawn in, too, and she has practically bid adieu to terra firma on this side of the globe, only, as a temporary expedient, there is a step-ladder placed horizontally between the quay and the ship's bulwarks, where, among creaking ropes and flapping blocks, the bold may-pocket Goliaths in the way of tugs, which venture across to the ship. On the quay is a little crowd of people who are in the way of being left behind-the boatswain's wife and the carpenter's daughter are exchanging hearty farewells with their relatives. Sailors While we have been talking and moving round, behold, the great dock gates have been swung back and the river is flooding in; and the iron bridge which seemed to shut us in has been swung back, and we are all one with the turbid flood, and the sails which are spread to the wind, and the steamers which are snorting about, and the whole world which is afloat and hurrying up and down with the tide. Out of the ruck comes first one little steamer and then another seem to take our measure, so to speak; and after a sonorous hail or two, one of the tugs backs in and makes fast to our big ship, while the other watches for her at the dock gate. Now there is hailing and shouting all over the ship. Things don't go here with a little bell and a handle that you pull, "Ahead, full speed," and so on, but instead we have stentorian words of command, the "ay, ay, 'ay, ay, sir," of the seamen. Here are two or three barefooted seamen running to man the wheel -the great double wheel at which four stout seamen may tug when seas are heavy and winds blow high. But there is a fine wheel-house, all glazed in, with an ornamental fringe of legs of mutton and sirloins of beef scattered about it, the butcher's last consignment, and carpenter's chips, and sundries; but the binnacle is all clear for action, though it seemed asleep till just now, when it began to rattle its compass card, and remind people of the cardinal points thereof. Yes, it is time we made for the plank perilous if we would not be carried off to the antipodes, for everybody is going ashore who means to stay in old England. But there are a few passengers yet on the dock side who have lingered to the last. There are tears and bitter partings; sons and brothers-sweethearts, perhaps they are with us now for a moment, and then with a wrench they are torn away. "Train to Gravesend, and try and ketch her there." But for two poor creatures who missed their train from Biddlesden, where there are only two a day, of what use such counsels? But a grisly old docksider intervenes. "Has she goes out she'll slew roun' agin the t'other side. You git over there, mum, with the lad." Away go the distracted pair in search of means for "gitting over there," for the bridge is gone, and it is about two miles round by the quay. The old fellow was right, "she" did "slew round"; and from appearances it is to be hoped that the pas senger from Biddlesden got on board. In the meantime, those who are left behind follow the slow progress of the ship as she forges through the entrance to the river. It is almost like a funeral procession, for there are many sad, tear-stained faces. But the sailors are clustered on the foks'l and the passengers about the poop; and now "she" is floating fairly out, the other tug has got hold of her with her own special wire rope which seems like a spider's filament to hold that hulking big ship. But the trouble there was with the barges, now clustered like so many water-beetles about the dock entrance; and the hauling of the bowline, and the getting the bowline into a boat which appeared at the nick of time, invisible before; and how the boatman dropped the bowline into the river, and how the seamen with one voice abused him both from ship and tug; and how the bowline was fished up again to the good old tune, and at last got on board the tug and made fast to the wire tow-rope, which was then hauled on board-to tell all this would militate with the interest of the parting scene. But the last passenger is going home-a sturdy Australian, who, despite the keenness of the wintry blast, is calmly walking about in his shirt-sleeves, or, rather, in full shirt costume, consisting of a handsome embroidered shirt, rich gold studs and links; full dress costume, indeed, but minus coat and waist-coat, which, perhaps, he wears beneath. Is he one of the last of the old diggers, with his belt full of nuggets? Anyhow, he swings himself on board, despising the ladder. One more belated sailor scrambles in, another kit is chucked after him; the ship moves, the ladder drops. There is For there is hip, hip, hurrah! from the another passenger to be hauled over the crew, and hip, hip, hurrah! from the passide. He was the very first to arrive, but sengers, and three times three and one went off with a friend for a drink at the cheer more; and those on shore, too, cheer last moment. Surely this is the last, as loudly as they may, and hats are waved for the ship is fairly on the move, the and handkerchiefs; and for a time we disriver tug hauling at her in front and the tinguish the forms of those we know and dock tug pushing behind. But there is who are dear to us, as they, too, wave a somebody really left behind after all. A last farewell, and then they are lost in the mother and son appear on the dock side e; mist and haze. the youth has lost his passage! What with the trouble of his going and the trouble of his being left behind, the poor woman is half distracted. Various suggestions are proffered to the unhappy ones. OUR QUARTERS IN BARBADOS. IN latitude thirteen North, liquids are of "A wherry from Blackwall Pier, mum!" at least equal importance to solids in making a meal. Nature has provided a wholesome and pleasant drink in the juice of the limes, which are as plentiful here as horsechestnuts in England. Moreover, the one thing of all others which might have been fairly expected to be dear here is absurdly cheap. Ice costs only about a farthing a pound, and is consequently used by every one. On our table at every meal appear a huge jug of iced water and a plate of fresh limes, plucked from our own trees, sliced in half, and with the seeds removed. Squeeze two or three of these into a tumbler of water, and you have a beverage that never palls on the palate. In spirituous drinks, the one most relished in Barbados is the "bitter," of which there are two distinct varieties. The proper basis of both is "falernum," a curious liqueur composed from rum and lime-juice. To a very varying quantity of this is added a proportion of extract of wormwood for the green bitter," and of angostura for the "red," also water to taste. All that now remains to do is to add a modicum of well pounded ice, and to beat up the whole with a "swizzlestick," which latter is made from a plant like our hemlock, and used by Inserting its umbelliferous top in the fluid, and revolving the stem rapidly between the palms of the hands. The result is a frothy, cool, and most seductive draught, which, taken in strict moderation, seems to have a good tonic effect when the system is a little below par. The only difficulty is to get people to take it in that moderation. keep out sun or rain, as the case may be. The width between the wheels is enormous, to give facilities for turning. As for the roads, they are not much to boast of. Most of them are simply the bare surface of the coral rock, hard, white, and so dazzling that blue spectacles are sold in Bridgetown to new-comers as & matter of course. Driving in Barbados has its dangers. Besides the fact of the roads being crowded by human beings, not particularly careful about getting out of the way, one is always liable, at a sharp corner, to encounter a train of six or eight mules, harnessed two and two, and dragging a rude lorry with enormous wheels, on which reposes an oozing hogshead, containing a ton of raw sugar, on its way to the harbour. To the negro mind our might is right, so far at least as dealings with whites are concerned, and it is as well not to stand upon ceremony, but to get out of the way of the moving mass as fast as may be. Steam power is being gradually introduced into the sugar-mills; but the island is still well studded with windmills, which pleasingly diversify the monotonous aspect of the over-cultivated country. Indeed, with so constant a power as the trade wind, most of the work of this favoured land can be performed almost free of cost. If you need water, you have only to sink a well and erect a windmill over it, which will keep your reservoirs full. The coral rock is so porous that there is no such thing as a river in the whole island. The whole rainfall sinks through the soil to form underground streams, which discharge their copious floods below the surface of the sea, Well-making presents easy conditions here. After luncheon, if military duty does not interfere, I have found it well to take a rest by lying down and reading for an hour or two. In this hot climate Europeans are much more likely to suffer from doing too much than too little. The breeze is so Some curious stories attach to these windinvigorating that it is easy to forget the mills, and one of the most noteworthy fact that one is in the tropics; but the incidents in connection with them occurred feeling of coolness is only caused by the quite recently. At a mill known as St. rapid evaporation of perspiration from the George's, on the twenty-first of May, 1891, body, and the constant loss of moisture is the men in attendance were shortening somewhat enervating. No one has any sail; one man did not let go his hold soon colour in the West Indies, and the most enough and was carried aloft by the great brilliant complexion soon fades to a forty-five foot sail. He, fortunately, had monotonous white. all his wits about him, and managed to get his feet round a bar of the sail, and to hold on to the one above. In this position he was carried round, the mill revolving with increased rapidity, as the man whose duty it was to feed it had rushed out at the first alarm. A cry was raised to choke the rollers with cane, and so stop the mill; this was done at the imminent risk of After four p.m. comes the fashionable time of the day. We drink a cup of tea, and order the carriage for a drive. The roads are full of vehicles, all of the same pattern, and that a remarkably ugly one. They are called "buggies " here, in American fashion, and are four-wheeled vehicles, with an unwieldy cloth hood to breaking some of the machinery, and so releasing the sails altogether. After six complete revolutions the mill was stopped, fairly choked by the bundles of cane thrust into its jaws, leaving the sail, to which the man still clung, uppermost, and he ninety feet from the ground. With marvellous nerve, or rather lack of nerves, he proceeded to climb down that perilous ladder, and reached the ground without assistance. An easy calculation will show that he had travelled close on six hundred yards in his aërial journey, and half the distance with his head downwards. Probably not a white man living could have held on under the circumstances; but the negro, when unfettered by boots, is as agile as a monkey, and had he only a tail would be a formidable competitor to one in the climbing line. Several years before, at a mill in the parish of St. Peter's, a similar case had happened with a more tragic ending. Hearing a commotion in the yard, the English wife of the mill manager went to the door of her house to see what was the matter; she was met by the rushing fall of a heavy body. It was a man who, carried aloft by the sail, had lost his hold and was dashed to pieces at the very feet of the lady, whose nervous system never wholly recovered the shock. The negro huts line the roads everywhere. They are the simplest of buildings, mere shells of thin boarding raised from the ground on heaps of stones. The windows are unglazed, as indeed are those in some of the better class houses. Fortunately the enormous population has had the good effect of eradicating almost all harmful reptile life. There are a few centipedes to be met with in the island, but scorpions are rare and snakes still rarer; the only variety left of the latter is quite harmless, and so scarce that the killing of one in our garden was quite an event in the garrison. Near most of the huts may be seen either a goat, sheep, or pig-none of them at all like our home animals, and all miserably thin, lank, and scraggy. The sheep soon loses its wool in the tropics, and becomes a wretched brown animal, with long legs and a back bearing small patches of its original covering, Nke a dog suffering from mange. In figure and general contour they resemble the goats so much that a new-comer cannot often tell them apart. As for the pigs, they look as if they would be good animals to hunt with greyhounds. In one quarter of the island is a large colony of whites and half-bloods, all descended from the Irish whom Cromwell exported wholesale during his attempt to settle the affairs of Erin. They have not thriven in this land, poor things, any better than they did in their own; but in their cottages, their faces, and their ways it is easy to trace their ancestry. The fields, at this time of the year, are uninteresting enough, and have nothing to offer to the eye but a monotonous expanse of small green plants, set at equal distances apart. Generally, these are the young sugar-canes, but sometimes Indian corn, yams, or sweet potatoes. Here and there one may see a bread-fruit tree, or a patch of bananas, but not often; although one would have thought that far more money might have been made by market-gardening than by sugar-growing. We pay ten cents here for a bread-fruit, and a good tree will bear many hundreds without the least trouble or expense to its owner. is true that it takes some years to grow, and that the Barbadian mind is not given to thinking much of the future. Some day, these West Indian Islands will awake from their lethargy, and then they will be the richest spot upon earth, with their lovely climate and natural advantages. It As we drive home, past the "Savannah," or garrison parade ground, where a vigorous game of polo is in progress, the sky is beginning to darken. The sun has set, and half an hour later it will be quite dark. This is, to an English mind, the great fault of the tropics. Everything is in extremes. The flowers are gorgeous, but almost ere you have time to admire them they have faded. Either the sun is blazing in the heavens or else it is night. When it rains it pours, and on one day the ground is like hot iron under foot, the next it is a pool of water. One longs for an English twilight evening, with the cool mist rising from the meadows, and the soft smell of the new-mown grass pervading the air. Here the perfume of trees and flowers makes the head dizzy as you drive at night along the roads, under the masses of frangipanni, and oleander, and nightblooming cereus; whilst instead of the restful calm of an English evening, here is a very true picture of a tropical one in our quarters. Scene-the drawing-room. Seven windows and two doors, all wide open to catch the faint breath of the dying breeze. A punkah lamp on a table, near which sits, on one side, the mistress of the house, with her feet and ankles carefully tied up in bags of mosquito netting. On the other side is the master of the house, with his trousers carefully tied up also. On the table is a glass of iced water. Outside the windows rises a constant and monotonous chorus from fifty or sixty "whistling frogs." Each one makes a noise as loud as the blow of a hammer on a piece of cast-iron, and exactly like it in tone. Inside the room a sharp slap is heard now and then, showing that a mosquito has taken advantage of an unguarded moment to settle on a face or hand. Enter at the open window a large black beetle, which gyrates round in a most alarming manner, stands on his head on the table, tangles himself in the lady's hair, and finally commits suicide in the glass of water. He is followed by others, some of which the cat devours, whilst the others have to be caught and transferred to a bottle, as their motions are so very eccentric that their presence prevents all hope of reading. Nine beetles having been disposed of, a lall occurs. This is followed by a noise as of burglars breaking windows. After an instant's panic, its cause is traced to a landcrab, which has climbed up the side of the house, and managed to drop into the space between the sashes of a window. He is ejected with great difficulty, not to say danger, as he makes most violent efforts to bite his liberator. Suddenly the room is filled with a sound that drowns all others—a shrill, clear note, like a reed instrument blown by steam. So high is its pitch that it seems to pierce | the ear like a needle. Both the sorely tried "humans" jump up and commence to search the floor, but with little result at first, as the sound is not localised. Like the whistling frogs, this musician is a ventriloquist. At last we discover a little cricket or cicada, an inch long, which is the cause of our alarm. He is caught and summarily dismissed; but whilst we were hunting him the mosquitos have had a good time, and we are glad to retire with our books to the shelter of our bedcurtains, with smarting hands and faces. On the way upstairs we pass a green lizard and an enormous frog, which both regard us very calmly, and a large land- crab which flies for his life. The mosquito curtains are spotted here and there with huge cockroaches, whose antennæ are as long as their bodies, and who run so fast that it is anything but an easy job to catch them. One which has kindly killed itself is being moved along the floor by a swarm of ants, all working together with the best military discipline. Another swarm has discovered a place where some sugar has been dropped, and is carrying it off in a stately procession-two ants to each grain of sugar. The water-bottle is full of them, for they are thirsty souls, and do not understand the slipperiness of glass. They are useful little insects, and their ways most interesting to study; but it is a drawback to be obliged to keep the table legs and all the eatables in vessels of water. As for getting rid of them altogether, the task would have been too much for Hercules himself. Their numbers, even in one house, must run into the billions. One hears so much about West Indian hurricanes that it may surprise many, as it did me, to hear that the last hurricane in Barbados occurred as long ago as 1837. It is certainly well that such visitations should be rare in a land where they can do such damage. One can well fancy the awful destruction of property and life that will ensue when the next of them comes. The light negro huts will be blown bodily into the sea like packs of cards, and many of the better houses will most certainly share their fate-not to mention the scene likely to ensue in the open roadstead of Bridgetown, with its crowded shipping. August is the great hurricane month. By that time the great sandy deserts of Africa and Asia are so heated by the sun's rays, that nowhere for thousands of miles over them does the barometer stand as high as thirty inches. This vast area of low pressure draws back towards itself the north-east trade winds. Generally the effect is merely to create a calm at Barbados during the months of August and September, which are consequently the hottest in the year. But now and then the opposing aërial forces start a revolving cyclone, which approaches the West Indies from the eastward, creating a hurricane or a mere storm, according to the depth of its central depression, and, passing away to the westward, is often deflected towards the north by the warm valley of air that lies over the Gulf Stream, and ends its short life as a gentle breeze in the North Atlantic. Fruit is tolerably scarce in our island, for the reason mentioned before, viz., that the soul of no landed proprietor rises above |