young man to go with them if one is to be had, for the feeling of security that a bow and arrow, or a lance wielded by a man's arm, gives to their helplessness. The women are very clever at fishing, and can use the axe fairly well; but I do not remember ever seeing one use the bow or spear, much less the gun, and although their eyes and ears are as keen as those of the men at detecting the presence of game, they have to rely on the young lads, in the absence of the grown-up men, to furnish any game which their own feminine skill cannot capture. When the sun declines over the forest and evening sets in, one by one the wanderers begin to return. As the sound of the paddles is heard on the river, the children rush down the bank to the landing-place, eager to see what has been caught or killed for their dinner, and soon they are seen returning with little loads of fish or game, or with some choice wild fruits which the parents have gathered for their darlings, for the thought of the children is never absent from the mind of the Indian parent. ` Now the glad fires are all lighted, and while the children crowd round to see the game or fish cut up and cooked, and to pick up and roast little stray fragments that their mothers give them, the young women carry up the heavier provisions, the firewood, and the necessary bamboos of water, while the men recline in hammocks and tell the news of the day to the stay-at-homes. Dinner is a ceremonious feast after a fashion, for there is usually a mutual interchange of dishes. This family has only boiled fish and the soup of it thickened with bishbaya, so small portions of fish on waha leaves and calabashes of the soup are sent round to the other families. In the same hut, at the far end, a family is cooking monkeys and iguanas, in the soup of which a quantity of green bananas is boiled to a pulpy mass seasoned with red peppers, and complimentary portions of this are exchanged for a taste of the others' messes. The poor old man and his wife in the adjoining hut have only a few crayfish and two small tortoises as big as the back of a hair-brush, but their daughter's husband has had luck, for his wife is boiling two curassows and roasting a great lean male iguana nearly 6 feet long, and the old people will have a taste of both. When dinner is done there is still some daylight left, and the boys now amuse themselves shooting arrows at a target made from a block of soft wood, or throwing spears at a cocoanut husk. The men sit by the fire and mend their broken arrows, or straighten and prepare bundles of canes for new ones, or give an hour's work to filing a small piece of bar iron to make a fish harpoon, or filing arrow-heads out of iron hoop, or looking over their little store of material, which consists of balls of black beeswax for preparing the joints of arrows or spears, twine for wrapping the same, half a dozen arrow-points of hardwood still in the rough, bundles of selected canes for the arrows, all cut into lengths and carefully straightened in the fire, a slat of lignum vitæ or soopa palm wood, from which is being made a new bow, which will perhaps be finished next year. The wretchedly thin dogs have licked all the calabashes and pots; the women wash them up, then split some firewood for the night, then lie down on a strip of bark upon the floor and have a talk and a smoke-that is, if there is any tobacco to be had, which is not always the case. Night has set in, and now is the time for the boys and the girls, who almost invariably resort to an outhouse, where round a fire they tell stories, laugh and sing, play reed flutes or jew's-harps, and have a good tousle and romp. Towards nine o'clock the women and girls climb up to their creccrees, and the lads seek repose in their string hammocks, swinging from the posts of the house. Nothing can be imagined more temperate and more innocent than this sylvan life, and such it is for the greater part of the year. It must not be taken for granted, however, that this temperance and frugality is a virtue, for it is only the result of the conditions of their life. No people in the world are so helplessly intemperate if they have the means to be so. But these people have found favour at the hands of God, who loves to look upon their innocent simplicity, and has forbidden that they should find the means to be intemperate and wicked. They seldom have the means to buy rum from the white people, and to make their own intoxicating mishla drinks requires more cassava than they can spare; consequently drinking orgies are few and far between, and are enjoyed with a relish proportionate to their rarity. Their sins are almost entirely confined to intrigues with other men's wives. That is their form of dissipation, and as it is far less hurtful to them than drinking habits are to European nations, we may conclude that the whites exceed the Indians in wickedness by their drinking alone, besides the enormous catalogue of other crimes of which the Indians are entirely ignorant. [ 273 ] CHAPTER XVIII. The King and I grow up-We visit his relations-Keys-Turtle-fishing— Pleasant hours on coral keys — Duckwarra - Oopla smalkaya · Sermon of the teacher-Its application-Love for mothers. - In due course of time the King and I were nearly grown up, and the cares of State were now borne by him. On the occasion now going to be related, he had to go to the north on business matters, and to see his relations, who lived up the Wanx River. He asked me to come with him, and his three sisters were to go with us. He had a fine boat, which was called a 'craft' on the coast, being a very large cedar canoe, raised, built up, and decked over so as to afford the shelter of its hold and a very small cabin aft. Carrying two masts with shoulder-of-mutton sails and a large jib, it was a fast sailer, and much admired as a craft fit for a King. The little cabin was given to the three girls, and in the large hold the rest slept on top of the stone ballast. Our crew consisted of one man, who was the King's quatmus, or quartermaster, two mulatto youths, the King, and myself. The cabin had a little companion-way closed by a sliding top; the hold had a hatch. In rough weather all was closed, but the flush deck had stanchions and a stout rope all round to prevent our being washed overboard, and a pair of sweeps enabled the boat to be propelled when there was no wind. We set sail from Blewfields with the land-wind, about nine in the evening, and by daylight we anchored on the west or lee side of the largest of the Pearl Keys. We landed and made a fire, at which the girls cooked our breakfast of roast plantains, boiled turtle, and coffee. Then, while the girls walked about the island and bathed in the clear sandy pools surrounded with coral, we had a sleep under the shade of the beach grape-trees. At noon, with a fresh breeze, we sailed through the reefs of coral, gained the open sea, and made for King Keys, which we reached by night, and slept there, though our sleep was much disturbed by soldier crabs, which crawled over us, nipping our toes, fingers and ears. Long before daylight we departed with the land-wind, and by 10 a.m. reached Maroon Key and had breakfast, after which we set sail for Duckwarra on the mainland. The principal time for turtle-fishing is the month of May, during the calm sunny days of which they delight to float asleep on the surface of the sea. At this time frequently a hundred canoes assemble on the Man-o'-War and King Keys, where the Indians encamp under the grape-trees, surrounded by an enclosure of live turtle, turned on their backs, whose silent sufferings are unnoticed, and their life only evident by their discharging the air from their lungs and taking a deep breath every twenty minutes. Poor creatures! their eyes are covered with flies, and no one thinks of throwing water on them to cool their shell, intensely heated by the sun. The Indians are in the height of enjoyment, for this season is a continual feast. Some are roasting fins, or calipees, some mending their harpoons, others sleeping on the sand. Along the beach, between the grape-trees, lines are stretched, which are covered with turtle-meat drying in the sun. The whole island is strewn with fragments of meat, and the smell of the green fat fills the air and is smelt miles to leeward. Here one sees the wastefulness of the Indians displayed in |