April 11th.

LAST evening, after visits from nearly all our friends; after a long walk in search of Spanish books, to find them much dearer than in New York; after looking as a matter of curiosity at the diamonds which are so lavishly displayed in the shops, to find them all singularly yellow,—I retired to sleeplessness and suffocation in my air-tight room. I awoke this morning with only life enough left in me to rejoice in the prospect of the little sea-voyage before us.

At ten comes Mr. R—— to accompany us to the wharf, where we found other friends awaiting us, with row-boat and swarthy boatman ready to carry us out to the steamer.

And here, as a conscientious narrator of important and dignified historical events, I have to record an item of experience, an unintentional experiment, that possibly may be of service to future female travellers.

So soon as our volante reached the landing, the custom-house officer appeared, received my keys, proceeded with official composure to examine the trunks. But the instant the top of the first was raised, up popped, most ferociously, in his face, a white skeleton—a hooped petticoat! At the last moment I discovered it lying on the top of the wardrobe in the hotel, and in great haste had stuffed it in the top of the trunk I was locking. As you may guess, a general shout of laughter followed from the watching bystanders and my friends, and I soon found my chagrin giving way before the irresistibly funny scene, and joined in the merriment. B—— took the thing, flourished it for my benefit, and crowded it back again. He then pointed to the other trunks, but the nonplussed officer solemnly shook his head, declaring himself quite satisfied. He expressed doubts about our being people likely to carry contraband articles. Hereafter, when you wish to smuggle cigars, linen, or guava jelly, you have only to cram an apparition of this sort—a jack-in-the-box—in the top of your trunk, and you are safe.

But here we are at the steamer. Our friends come on deck; we sit talking until the last moment arrives for setting sail; they descend the step-ladder to the little boat, and their waving handkerchiefs are soon lost among the shipping.

A pretty, fair-haired girl sits near me, whom, from her resemblence to the captain, I perceive to be his daughter. Presently she asks me to go to the other end of the ship to see the anchor drawn up—always a cheerful sight when fifteen or twenty ruddy Englishmen march regularly round and round at the work, while the pleasant roundelay all sing directs their movements.

And now “the last link is broken which binds me to” this happy clime; we float down through the winding bay; past ships of all nations; past our favorite Cortina; the Punto; the Morro, that was the first to welcome and is the last to leave us; and now the low shores are receding fast in the distance, and the bright walls and brown tiles and pleasant friends fade out again into the past and the forever.

Thursday, 12th.—We are glad of this opportunity to know a thoroughly English ship-captain, officers, crew, custom, and discipline. Nothing can be better fitted to inspire confidence than the fresh, honest, intelligent face of Captain B——, with his rough sailor dress, and manners whose bluffness cannot conceal the completely affable and well-bred gentleman under them.

The passengers are so few that we are beginning to know them all. Various miscellaneous gentlemen of as many different nations; three or four Spanish ladies and gentlemen, some with children and servants; captain’s daughter and ourselves, complete the list. One of the Spaniards, who is to leave wife and eldest son in New York while he goes with the youngest son, a poor little sea-sick thing, to Germany, to school, speaks English and French with some fluency, while—a not unfrequent occurrence in Cuban families—the wife knows and cares only for Spanish. He has been pronouncing difficult Spanish words to me while his pretty wife laughs kindly at my attempts and helps him in his self-appointed task. So what with this novel sociality and a summer sea as beautiful and almost as calm as the sky, we get, instead of sea-sickness, delicious sleep and rare gusto for this English roast beef; instead of enervation, health that waxes with every hour.

Evening.—Nothing could be more enchanting than this air and sunshine, this bright crystal sea, this gently-moving ship, this entire voyage. A few low reefs and coral islands are becoming visible with our glasses; also many vessels lying quietly here and there,—wreckers I am told, which do a most flourishing business in these regions; indeed I learn that wrecking is the chief and all-absorbing occupation of Nassau, for which we are bound.

If genuine storms and honest ignorance of these dangerous passages do not supply a sufficient number of wrecks to satisfy the gambling tastes of the wreckers, and of the merchants who make fortunes by their spoils, it is found easy enough to make bargains with unprincipled captains, by which, for a certain sum, a wreck can be achieved at a given time with unfailing certainty. This is so managed that captain and wreckers shall make a comfortable little speculation of the affair and nobody lose anything except the all unsuspicious insurance company or the innocent owners of the vessel.

Nassau, New Providence, Royal Victoria Hotel, April 13th.—After being rocked gently to sleep, and then sung into deep slumbers all night by these pure-voiced ocean nurses, I was awakened this morning by the firing of guns announcing our entrance in the bay of Nassau. This city is to be our destiny for the next month, at the end of which the next regular steamer goes north. It is thought prudent to graduate in this way the change from the heat of Havana to the probable cold of New York.

We hung on deck to reconnoitre this little item of our future, and to find ourselves anchored in the brightest, lightest possible pea-green water, through which the clean, beautiful bottom is so clearly revealed, that the numerous swarming boats seem to be floating in an atmosphere only a little more dense and colored than the delicious nectar we are breathing.

While waiting for the inevitable custom-house officer, we lean over the deck railing to watch this phantom loveliness, and the boatmen that are urging us in English that sounds as droll as did the Spanish at first in Havana, to buy their wares. These consist of the only exports of the island,—sponges, bananas, pineapples; some of the larger boats have the bottoms covered with living turtles, others are half full of huge conch shells, or varieties of smaller shells arranged regularly in partitional boxes.

Presently the captain comes and points out the just arrived custom-house officer, a regal-looking negro, dressed in uniform. While B—— goes with him to examine the luggage, the captain shows us the white pilot-boat from which one of his men was knocked overboard on the last voyage, by the rough waves in this bay. The negroes who were rowing him fled in affright: before help could arrive he had gone down for the last time, and was never seen again. But a few days after, a shark was caught and killed, and safely in his stomach lay the man’s hand, immediately recognizable by the sleeve and cuff; beside it lay a goat’s head and horns, and various other trophies of a shark’s victories.

But now we must go: the boat waits for us here, and the hotel carriage on shore. A farewell with our Spanish friends, by whose cards I find, as I have before been informed, that the husband and wife in Cuba have distinctly different names; the name on the card of one gives you no clue to name or address of the other.

An English carriage brought us up the English road, past the English faces to the English-built hotel here on the hill, overlooking the English town, the bright bay, and outstretched ocean that owe allegiance to Her Majesty. Even the hotel belongs to the British government.

The high upper parlor opens upon a piazza commanding a noble and extensive view. While waiting here for my room,—its occupants go north in this steamer,—a quiet, elderly gentleman, with much blandness and benevolence in his not extraordinary face, entered, and sitting down by the table addressed some kind and casual remarks, evidently intended to make a stranger feel at home, while I, tired of this long silent sitting and waiting, was glad enough of any change. On going down stairs I found I had been conversing with ex-President P——, who has been here since January for the health of his invalid wife, and also possibly to find a place where he can escape being lionized, and enjoy the retired literary leisure of which he is fond.

At half-past two came dinner. It is so late in the season, that not more than a dozen guests are left. Turtle soup of nicest and freshest quality commenced the ceremony, turtle pie helped to continue it, so did turtle steak, otherwise you might imagine yourself at an ordinary American hotel except that beef and mutton, and ducks and chickens, appear in an excellent state of mummification, as if they had all died of a lingering consumption, and would severally assist us to follow their example. The climate of the tropics is ill-adapted to our domestic animals. We are told that the best American cows die here after a few months, even if brought in the fall. Still it is a question, if want of care, and a general shiftlessness in all matters of the sort, have not more sins of animal murder to answer for than this delicious climate. The residents confess as much. By the way, can you guess the proper, legitimate name of the natives of New Providence? Not, as they are sometimes called, “Bahamaites,” or “Nassauers,” or “West Indians,” but Conchs.

This evening our first drive; pleasant, but exhausting, I much fear; all that the island has of novelty or interest, measuring, as it does, only fourteen miles in length and eight in width. In the first place, it is not only founded upon a rock, but it is a rock; the debris of coral reefs up to within a few inches of the surface. This surface is clothed with a light soil, which in the country is clothed with a light verdure, mostly of shrubs, briers, and weeds, interspersed here and there with stray dwarfed palms and cocoas. Occasionally the curious cotton-tree is found, with wide patriarchal branches covered with delicate green leaves, or else with a long, large pod full of perfect cotton to all appearances, perhaps intents, but not purposes, for it is proved to be useless. The roots of this tree, doubtless for want of soil, grow very much out of the ground, living in the air almost as much as the branches. In the town and its suburbs, oranges, bananas, sabadillas, mangoes, etc., are cultivated extensively, giving the whole place from a distance the air of an inhabited garden.

The streets and roads are a phenomenon. Every one is of solid rock covered with some kind of cement most dazzling to the eyes in its whiteness; so much so, that strangers are advised to never go out without veils. I see many of the inhabitants wearing blue and green glasses. But no rain or drought can affect them; never mud, never dust; always as smooth and white and clean as the cement floors in the parlors of Havana.

I am more than anything else impressed with the quantity and quality of the negro element. There are, according to statistics, eight black to one white person, but in passing the streets you would suppose the pepper to be more than the rule, and the salt less than the exception. Bless me! how they bubble and swarm in every street, every corner, every alley, every hut; to each man two women, to each woman at least a dozen babies; and men, women, and children always idle, and intensely contented with their idleness; fat, and lusty, and happy, and good-for-nothing. I think no one can come from a slave country to this without acknowledging the obtrusive difference, the increased appearance of happiness; if jolly contentedness can be called so. And rapidly as they increase in the States, no colored fertility can match this, where babies are undoubtedly indigenous to the soil, cuticle though it is. Every way I turn I expect to see a head just budding from the ground, hands sprouting, wool germinating, or possibly a foot grown uppermost, with the rest of the dawning body just bursting from the ground, and like Milton’s hind, or calf, or some other quadruped in Eden, “pawing to get free.”

If I were to ask one of these bouncing negresses, as Willis did, what curiosity or product peculiar to the island I could find to carry home, I should unquestionably get the same answer,—except that his, being on the island of Martinique, was in French,—“Bien que les enfants. En voulez-vous?”

Saturday, April.—This evening a drive on the “Eastern Road,” the Paseo of Nassau.

I thought the air in Cuba unparalleled, but this is freer, purer; an always fresh and warm-enough seabreeze. It has a richness, roundness, completeness; it is not a thin, sharp, cutting melody, but a perfectly elaborated harmony. In what a gentle, healing affectionate way it possesses one, interpenetrating all the sensitive fevered fibres of the lungs like a blessing, or like a spirit full of blessings, bringing with it vitality, repose, and life!

In our drive we met all the beau monde of Nassau, the government officers and families, with their always English faces and figures, which are in strikingly redundant contrast with the consumptive Americans seated up and down our hotel table. One thing assures me that I am not in Spanish Cuba, with her tenacity for national customs and habits; a tenacity for which I, coming from the shifting fancies of Yankeedom, sincerely honor her. It is this: We are once more in a land of gloves and bonnets. How stiff are these London exported bonnets compared with those exquisitely graceful Spanish veils, or prettier hair-ornamented Spanish heads; and as for the gloves, I can now understand without surprise that when Cubans first saw foreigners wearing gloves they supposed them used to hide some frightful blemish or deformity.

Our drive lay along the shore of this extraordinary bay, with its long parallel lines of brightest, lightest blue and pea-green, contrasting with the dark ultramarine purples and browns of all hues and densities, sometimes shading into each other, again preserving themselves, in spite of all republican efforts of the wind, clearly distinct. The cause of this phenomenon, I am told, is still a disputed question among the scientific. On the other side of the bay are built the cottages of wreckers and fishermen, the latter including those who dive for sponges, many of which we saw lying about in immense heaps; also those who dive for conch shells, which are exported in large quantities to France to be used in various artistic manufactures. The shores are covered with superannuated and dilapidated conchs, bleaching in the sun and calcining in the waves.

Another novelty is the turtle houses, built of poles out in shallow water, in such a way that the water can get freely in and out, while the self-roofed crawlers do neither the one nor the other.

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