dry season. The King and I were inseparable companions, but were not distinguished from the rest. As we grew older, the King developed the great fondness for boating which is inherent in the Mosquito Indians. Some of his relations from the Cape brought him a little canoe in the rough. It was about 10 feet long, with beam just enough to fit our little posteriors. We got it beautifully trimmed—that is, dressed down to proper shape and thickness-provided a shoulder-of-mutton sail, and sailed about the lagoon, he

and I.

I cannot help thinking Heaven had a special care of me, when I think of all the risks I ran, sailing about for years in that little tub of a thing. Every day we capsized, sometimes many times a day. The lagoon was full of sharks and alligators, and my white skin made the risk much greater to me than to the King. Many times when capsized and swimming about we have smelt the strong musk smell of the alligator, or the oily, fishy smell of the shark, said to be caused by its vomiting the scales and bones of fish it has eaten. We would then swim to the canoe, scramble in, bale out, and feel very frightened, till in a short time we forgot all about it. Sometimes we idled about at the islands, not noticing that the sea-breeze had come down very strong. We would put up sail to return across the lagoon, but as soon as we cleared the shelter of the land we got into very rough water, and upset forthwith. Then we found that we could not get in again, because the waves swamped the canoe as fast as we baled out, so we had to put up the sail and hang on to the gunwale till the wind and waves carried us across the lagoon. This proceeding was doubly dangerous, first on account of sharks, next because if by accident we should let go the gunwale, the canoe might sail away, and we might not be able to catch it again. Poor Crusoe, whose name is mentioned above, was drowned in this

manner.

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS

23

Sometimes we ventured right out to sea, and choosing a day when the breakers rolled in, we would run the breakers in our little canoe. This was so great a pleasure that we required company to enjoy it, and we used to get other boys. in other canoes to join in the fun. We all approached in a line as near the breakers as we dared; then, letting all the big ones pass, we would give the signal for a little one, paddle towards the shore as hard as we could till the breaker overtook us, then steer the canoe as it rushed through the water with the breaker roaring beside us. Those who exerted the most strength and skill reached the beach safely; the 'duffers' were slewed round broadside on, and rolled over and over. However, we had a timely accident, which so alarmed us that we abandoned a sport which for young boys was far too risky. On this occasion we had taken our breaker in fine style, and were shouting with exultation as we rushed at 15 miles an hour through the water, when suddenly the canoe seemed to stand up on end. The bow must have stuck in the sand, for the canoe was flung over end for end with great violence, and both of us were hurt.

One great source of amusement was to shoot a fish called mootroos. For this purpose the water must be calm, and early morning, before the sea-breeze set in, was the proper time. For the sport we provided ourselves with little bows 2 feet 6 inches long, made from split 'wild cane,' and a few arrows made from the midrib of the cocoanut, and wading in water knee-deep we sought our prey. The mootroos is a fish without scales, from 2 to 4 inches long, striped and dappled silvery white and dark brown, with prominent eyes, and hard sharp teeth like a parrot's bill; it is found in great numbers swimming in shallow water. When pierced with the little arrow, it immediately blew itself up like a ball, in which condition its skin, previously smooth, became rough and prickly. We used to draw it off the arrow, and fling it violently on the water, which caused the skin to burst with

a loud pop. This was great delight, and if we reflected on the cruelty of it, we justified ourselves by the great annoyance the mootroos caused in fishing by taking off the bait.

There was an old African woman named Ma Presence. She had been a slave all her life, and, being now blind, had been discarded by her master and thrown upon her own resources for many years before we knew her.

Her little hut stood not far from our house. It was, like all the houses of the common people at Blewfields, built of hardwood posts, rafters, and ridge-pole, the sides and ends wattled with split papta palm; it was thatched with the leaves of the silico palm, and divided by a wattled partition into a bed and a sitting room, with a back and front door, and at the back there was a separate shed for a kitchen. The sitting-room was furnished with a rough table and two benches. The bed in its room was a framework of sticks, supported on forked posts stuck into the ground. On the sticks was a wide sheet of thick bark as hard and stiff as a board. On this was a thick soft mat made from midribs of the plantain leaf, bound closely side by side with twine. A gay patchwork coverlet was all the bedclothes necessary in this hot climate. A large pillow stuffed with down of the silk-cotton and covered with a clean pillow-case completed the bedclothes.

Ma Presence had lived by charity before we knew her. My sisters practised charity towards her, with the inevitable result that very soon the cost of her living was thrown entirely upon us, and we fed and supported her for about fifteen years.

To me Ma Presence was a source of mystery and wonder. She told me long stories of Africa, to which I was never tired of listening. She was a Mandingo, probably from the head-waters of the Niger, and her tribe were Mohammedans. She remembered that when she was a little girl she lived in a village of huts surrounded by a high

strong fence. At night the gates were shut, and the jackals and hyenas howled round about, whose cries she imitated until my blood ran cold. Sometimes on dark nights she heard the crashing and tramping of ahsoonoo, which I understood to be elephants. Her tribe must have been warlike, for she described with pride the gallant appearance of the warriors who went away to battle and returned with trophies and spoil. The clearing in which her village stood was surrounded by forest, and a beautiful river flowed over a rocky bed in the valley below, where the children bathed all through the hot day. One day, while they were bathing, they heard a dreadful screaming and the sound of guns up at the village, and presently saw flames rising from the huts. They rushed up the bank to see what was wrong, when a warrior seized our little girl by the arm, and dragged her away to the bush.

She seemed to have a very indistinct recollection of her journey in company with all the captives from her village, and others who formed the slave caravan, but when she saw 'the great black sea' she covered her mouth with her hand, and was lost in astonishment and fear. In short, she crossed the sea, and was sold to a planter in Jamaica, by whom, when she grew up, she had a child which died young. Then she was sold and brought to Blewfields, where she worked till she was old and blind, in which condition she was thrown on the world as we found her.

Under our protection, Ma Presence was held to be in good circumstances by other needy and greedy old negro women, who, when they visited my sister, would throw out hints. that there were other women quite as deserving of attention as Ma Presence. Nor was it the old women only who envied Ma Presence her comfortable circumstances; the old men also had their eye on her. An old African negro named Ta Tom (or Taam, as they pronounce it) came courting Ma Presence. My sister was astonished, when Ma Patience

came to visit and beg, at her 'sucking her teeth '—a gesticulation of great contempt among the negroes-and saying, 'Tcho! some old woman him too papisho foo tooroo, him no had no shame,' sucking her teeth again. On my sister asking what she meant, she said: May be you no bin yerry Ma Presence an Ta Taam gwine hab.' The word papisho means puppet-show, and is used by the negroes to express a silly, foolish person or action. Also, as there was then no proper marriage among the negroes, gwine hab means that they were going to be married in their fashion.

Thus it happened that old Ta Taam sneaked into the household of Ma Presence in order to enjoy some of the comforts that we dispensed to the old woman. In return he cultivated her little garden, which had previously been a waste of bushes, and Ma Presence was thus able to make us little presents from time to time of a basket of okros, a plateful of gungo peas, a yam, or a few eggs.

Ta Tom was a tall, powerful old negro. He often got drunk, and was violent in his cups; and many times, at all hours of the night, we would be alarmed by the shrieks and yells of Ma Presence being beaten by her husband. On the arrival of myself and sister he would desist and go to bed, leaving us to bathe her bruises with vinegar and brown paper. Negro women are used to being beaten, and it makes no difference in their attachment to their husbands. But one night he beat her too much altogether. So the magistrates, who were two negroes and a white man, had Ta Tom tied to a guava-tree and well whipped with a manatee strap, and then he was told to go away, and not return to Ma Presence's house.

About a week after this Ta Tom quarrelled with a powerful negro who had run away from his master at the Island of St. Andrews to enjoy the freedom which then prevailed at Blewfields, and poor old Tom was brought in with his ribs stove in, unconscious and dying, and laid on Ma Presence's