discharges in many mouths, like the Sunderbunds of the Ganges. The mouths are so many, and so intersected by cross-creeks, that not everyone can find his way through them into the main river, three-quarters of a mile wide at the head of the delta. In these deep, narrow, gloomy creeks of the delta the old buccaneers used to hide their vessels from the Spaniards, and on Blewfields Bluff they had a blockhouse mounted with guns, and kept a look-out. Where the many mouths of the delta discharge into the lagoon there is about 12,000 acres of shallow water, the bottom sandy and muddy, the shoals covered with water-grass, the haunt of countless flocks of ducks, teal, coots, and every kind of water-bird. The water varies in depth from a foot or two to 6 and 8 feet, and swarms with fish, among them sting-rays and sharks, with a few manatees, and an alligator here and there. The rest of the lagoon is deep enough for schooners to sail over, and in the rainy season, when the trades blow up it, it is very rough. The islands in the lagoon are little hills of basalt, with rich soil, and densely covered with forest-the home of the migratory pigeons, which roost there in thousands. They shelter also countless shags and a few pelicans, with yellow-tails and parrots in great numbers. These birds know well the value of islands, where opossums, raccoons, bush-dogs, tiger-cats and snakes cannot molest them.

The coloured people call themselves Creoles, as 'nigger' is a term of opprobrium, and mulatto' is of doubtful significance. Their plantations are placed far from the village to avoid the necessity of fencing out the pigs. At the Bluff, and on the many ridges that jut into the lagoon along its western shore, they fell the forest and cultivate in small patches plantains, cassava, rice, yams, breadfruit, eddos, Indian corn and the edible arum root, with oranges, sapodillas, guavas, mammees, papaws, star-apple, pineapples, sour-sops, custard-apple, sugar-cane and mangoes.

Except a small settlement of Rama Indians on the islands at the south end of the lagoon, there are no Indians at Blewfields; yet there are evidences of their having formerly lived there in great numbers. In the middle of the town are two gigantic mounds of oyster and cockle shells, and in various places along the western shores are several similar mounds overgrown by forest. The mounds in the town have long been used to 'metal' the roads, and innumerable objects of antiquity are found all through them, such as flint spear-heads 6 inches long, and arrow-heads generally 2 inches long; broken pottery in vast quantities, generally ornamented with patterns, showing traces of colour; children's toys or idols, whichever they are, made of baked clay, some like a parrot's head with a loose ball in the mouth, others rude little figures of men with hideous faces; discs of clay with a hole in the centre for inserting a spindle to spin cotton. yarn; stone axes and charred bones of every animal in the country. The lagoon still abounds with cockles and oysters, but it must have taken centuries to accumulate such heaps of shells; and as the mounds are 30 feet high, an arbitrary custom must have compelled the women to climb to the top to deposit the little basketful of shells, the product of the day's consumption.

No one can tell when the Indians lived in such numbers on the shores of Blewfields Lagoon; neither can anyone say when the Mosquito Indians first settled on the coast. In Dampier's time the Mosquito men were perpetually at war with the interior tribes, and I have no doubt that the course of affairs was similar to what happened in New Zealand; that is, that the Mosquito Indians living on the coast were the first to get hold of European weapons, and with them they at once overpowered the interior tribes and drove them from the coast to the creeks and rivers inland. Dreadful times these must have been; yet, strange to say, these were the times when the Indians were the most numerous and

CREOLE LANGUAGE

19

prosperous, and, like the New Zealanders, the more they fought and devoured each other, the happier they were.

The negroes, mulattoes and quadroons composing the population of Blewfields in my day, though somewhat kept up to the mark by Europeans trading and living among them, yet were slowly relapsing into the superstitious, gloomy, halfsavage state into which the blacks, left to themselves, always sink back. They were divided into cliques which hated each other, and practised obeah and wakes in the regular African fashion. Wife-beating was fearfully common, and quarrelling was carried out systematically. In the still nights we used to listen with horror to the yells and screams of beaten women, while one or more old women for an hour at a time would make the woods echo with abuse and curses, as from a distance they defied their enemies, who took no notice of the volleys of imprecations till next night, when their own old woman would take her turn at it. I remember going with my sister to a woman's house about some washing; a girl was sitting at the door, whom my sister asked: 'Pennyluppy, (Penelope), where is your mother?' 'Him gone da Ole Benk gone quarrel' (She is gone to Old Bank to quarrel); and sure enough we could hear her far off uttering a shrill and ceaseless torrent of abuse.

I shall speak* of the Mosquito language, with its defined grammar and well-observed rules; but who can describe the language spoken by the Creoles of Blewfields? It was a jargon of English which, left to itself, would soon have become a distinct language. As a boy I learned it in no time, and for years after my sister had a hard task in bring ing me back to pure English. Let me give a sample of it. Every year, about February, the men used to depart for the hawksbill turtle fishery, returning in May; and as soon as a returning canoe entered the lagoon, the crew in turns blew a conch shell until close to the landing-place. These turtle

* See Appendix A.

fishers always went to the southward for their fishing, and were therefore called 'southward men.' One day I heard the shell blowing, and ran into the house calling out : 'Sudderd man day com.' My sister asked, 'How do you know?' I replied: 'Bin a mid day yerry de coong shell bin day blow.' It is not easy to discover that this meant: 'Because I hear the conch shell blowing.'

An old negro used to tell us astonishing stories of duppies he had seen in the Bush, and if we doubted him he would exclaim: 'Fo tooroo a wish him tonda pillit a me na lackatone!' which means 'For true (if not) I wish thunder may split me like a rockstone.'

Everybody knows that the negroes are, compared with ourselves, a childish, simple-minded, faithful, affectionate people, easily led or imposed on, credulous and superstitious, easily worked up to religious fervour, or even frenzy, yet incapable of understanding anything of religion but its outward observance; fond of children, yet bad mothers because of ignorance or thoughtlessness; inveterate thieves, cunning and sly, yet at the same time open-hearted, generous, and capable of the strongest friendship and personal attachment ; brave enough to make good soldiers, yet by no means. truthful; hard-working, yet fond of ease and idleness; frugal and simple in habits and desires; more temperate in drink than the whites, but less so than the Chinese or Indians; great lovers and very prolific.

Our negroes at Blewfields were partakers in all the above rare traits, and were as amiable and odd a people as one could find anywhere. But we had all shades of colour besides the negroes-brown mulattoes, coffee - and - milk coloured quadroons, and a few nearly as white as myself. Generations of ship captains had come and gone, leaving families at all the Creole settlements. Each captain as he succeeded the last added some more white blood, till the result in my day was that at Blewfields, Pearl Key Lagoon,

Boca del Toro, Corn Island, St. Andrews, Old Providence, which are the other principal settlements of the Creoles, there were some families nearly white, with coffee-and-milk mothers, brown grandmothers, and black great-grandmothers. One family I knew had all these alive.

Some captains seem to have had a preponderating influence on the population. Wherever you went you would not fail to find Shepperds or Hodgsons; others were more rare, such as the Quins and Haleys. Those on whom captains had not smiled generally dispensed with surnames. Crusoe's father, for instance, might be either Robinson or Crusoe; I never ascertained which. Humphrey's father was Ta Tom, ta being a pet name for uncle. John Thompson's father was only known by the name of Black Tiger, because he was unusually black.

Our women and girls had good names, but much transfigured. Rooty (Ruth) was a fine bouncing mulatto girl; Pennyluppy, a handsome black; Joody (Judith), a lively quadroon; Joney and Minta (Joannah and Araminta), a pair of tall, well-made twins as black as sloes. But the old ladies rejoiced in stately names, such as Ma Prudence, Ma Patience, Ma Presence, Ma Fidelia, ma being mother.

My earliest recollections of Blewfields are those of bathing and sailing toy boats in the lagoon, and it seems to me now that a considerable part of my young days was spent in the water. My companions were the Mosquito King and coloured boys in great numbers. In the early part of the day they had to cut and split firewood, fetch water, grate cocoanuts, and mind the baby. I and the King had to do our lessons, but when we had had our dinner at one o'clock we would rush off to the lagoon, tear off our clothes, and plunge in. Then we would produce our toy boats, which were hidden in the bushes, and trimming the sails to the fresh trade wind, we launched them in batches to race, following after with shouts and yells. This was done every day during the