is of a delicate pink color. For this he has refused tempting offers from the British Museum. One may spend an hour a day, if a lover of beautiful forms of the deep, in these airy rooms, and find at every turn something strange and striking; and the collection is well worthy of a larger audience than the few strangers who come to admire it from foreign lands.

Among the many insects that fly about evening lamps and in pleasant gardens outside, I notice a painful lack of brilliant colors. No painted moths nor shining fire-flies are to be seen, and the latter are unknown; so that the island offers none of the attractions to an entomologist that are so rich in Venezuela.

Poisonous reptiles are few and scarce; and St. Patrick must have made a flying trip to Barbados, as far as snakes are concerned. I hear of a few centipedes and scorpions, but they are found only in the neighborhood of sugar estates, scarcely ever being seen in town, so that people who fear intertropical lands in general as homes of venomous serpents and insects, may put their apprehensions aside if they conclude to go to this island.

Arrowroot culture is carried on in a shiftless sort of a way, and a valuable industry has thus been neglected, while the Barbadians have consistently put all their eggs into one basket. On the northern side of the island, amongst roaring surges and flying sea-spume, I saw a little patch of something growing, with tender, feeble, light-green leaves, very like lettuce that is a week above ground. The cultivated land was perhaps a quarter of an acre, and in one corner of the lot stood a miserable thatch-roofed shanty. This was an arrowroot plantation and mill. A lank, poverty-stricken white answered to my call, and conducted me about his estate, ending up with the manufacture. Two women, whose pallid faces, bent backs and listless looks spoke of scanty rations all their lives, were busy squeezing the water out of a mass of white fibre by handfuls into a sheet stretched over a barrel. In one corner stood a large circular grater to be turned by some lazy hand-and that was all.

The root looks like small, white sugarcane, divided into joints, growing some six inches long; is cut into fibre by

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grating, soaked in water, and then has the starch that is known as arrowroot squeezed out slowly by such discouraged looking females as those were. In ap pearance and taste this was quite equal to what I have seen in Bermuda; and along this north coast is vacant land that is useless for cane, enough to supply a great demand, with every facility for cultivation. And it must be profitable, for upon the receipts from that petty, poor place, at $2.75 per hundred pounds, these three people subsisted. Living, it was not; that was an ambition to which their wildest hopes had not soared; but they did not cease to exist, and were not more utterly dejected in gait and general get-up than many of their compatriots who worked in cane-fields.

Lying beyond St. Andrews, a long drive from Bridgetown, and occupying the eastern face of the northern end of the island, are a series of remarkably steep cliffs, that climb out of the sea to a perpendicular height of hundreds of feet. To their bases come long Atlantic swells that have met no hindrance to their will for three thousand miles, and these attack this rocky barrier with a fierceness that gives to the coast some of the most magnificent sea-effects that I have ever watched. Even North Irish or Hebridean cliff surges were but baby play beside them. Striking with a boom, they mounted almost to the summit with a green, glassy rush that reminded me of Niagara just above the fall; then combing into spray, lashed out greedy fangs of foam at the looker-on, and retreated with a roar like near and heavy thunder. They followed in quick succession, each seeming to climb a little higher than the last, until one's senses were quite upset by enormous force, and we experienced a curious illusion of motion. Land and wave were waltzing to the music of the sea. An infernal one-two-three, one-twothree movement began; solid rock lost its anchorage, and the world went round and round until giddiness came, and the steadiest head dragged the rest away. There was a wild look in my companion's eyes, and she was half hysterical when the earth regained its senses a little away from the orchestra's reach.

But we had come to see what is called the animal flower cave, a collection of

actiniæ in one of the caverns that dashing water has worn in the rock-face far below by years of steady toil.

No place this for women. So they returned to the carriage and marooned it awhile, which is Barbadian for recuperation physical, while we climbed down a stony sort of chasm, until before us, a little way across, was the cave opening, and leading to it a narrow path along a ridge, steep, wet, and with most hungrylooking waves rushing over it at irregular intervals. The guide watched his chance, darted over with a whoop; and watching ours, we followed. The tail end of a ferocious swell caught one fellow, and I thought he was gone, but he escaped with a sound wetting, and we called him clumsy.

Inside, the floor was tolerably dry and quite safe, so after a little more abuse for our friend who had scared us so, we went into an inner chamber, and there in a circular basin with stone floor, reposed a still pool of liquid glass. Now and then its shining surface was gently stirred by trickling streams falling into it, but it was almost incredible that water should be so transparent as this. Where there was no motion, nothing whatever parted eye from crevices in that floor, six feet below.

We gathered round, looking quietly at the water, when what had seemed like a dead stem of a water-lily near me began to expand. "Look !" I whispered in fear of spoiling the show; and in twenty seconds that pool seemed a blazing garden of flowers. With a prevailing color of yellow, of the tint of buttercups, there was enough of red and blue to make purple hues also, which changed as we gazed enchanted, with each slight motion of the plants.

Finally Jack plunged his hand in after the nearest one, and, presto! the garden was gone, the pool was empty again. Quiet for a moment, and the play began once more; and so we had various acts, all alike. We were in hopes that colors might change, but they were ever the

same.

So, with a good final look, we started for the ridge again-the guide called it a saddle-made the passage safely, and drove quickly home through a delightful night, over roads that wound through

cane-fields, like white lines of foam upon a rolling sea.

Cole's Cave is another pretty excursion, in quite a different part of the island. Driving out from Bridgetown, guests of our friend Howells, the way led up hill and down, yet mainly ascending until the central crest was reached, from which a pretty picture was before us, of land and town and sea. There was nothing grand

only man and nature were at their best in spring attire, and rich fields rolled down to the blue distance with scarce a single point of foliage, their green surface lighted by turning sails of many windmills, whose whiteness shone from far as sun-rays caught them. The city was invisible on the bay-shore; but tracery of many masts and ropes was drawn like spider-webs against closing water-line and transparent sky. A cool fresh breeze was blowing-so fresh that I drew my coat close around me, although the mercury was close to eighty; for a little chill in the tropics, quite unnoticed at the time, may mean fever or lumbago or neuralgia to unwary strangers, who cannot realize how freely their skin is acting after a Northern winter's lockup.

Then we came to a series of cracks in the earth, exactly like some I have seen elsewhere after earthquake shocks, and probably resultant from similar causes. Only these were made ages ago, and time has smoothed their rugged sides and draped naked rock-forms with clinging vine and waving fern until they are really beautiful. In one of these clefts lay the entrance to our cave, a deep well from the chasm floor, down,which we climbed, eighty feet or more, like cats, with feet and hands. Light grew dim descending, until at the sloping bottom Howells pointed out a hole apparently just big enough for a fair-sized dog to squeeze in, lighted several candles, and started with a laconic, "Now then, here we are."

The opening was really large enough to admit a stooping man, however, and we crawled slowly over a floor of slimy loose stones, into a nasty sooty uninteresting cavern. A little of it went a great way, but we were there to investigate, and pushed on carefully until a muddy brook interposed its barrier and protested. Here, in pools that were being

dug from solid rock, water was collecting which a company was to carry to Bridgetown later, and so enter into competition with one already established.

The only curious thing about the place was that every few feet, circular holes were drilled a few inches deep in the roof as regularly as if by a steel cutter. How this was done baffled conjecture, and the impressions of the trip were that Howells had given us a very pleasant drive and al fresco lunch, and that the cave, as a cave, was a total failure.

Hotel accommodations in Barbados are excellent and plentiful, and rates are from two to three dollars a day for transients. Parties wishing quiet homes can readily secure board at less rates in various parts of the town; and those seeking rest will find it, together with strong sea-air and an almost changeless temperature, along the Northern coast. There is probably no place in the world just like Barbados, and its people have a pride of country that is remarkable, considering its lack of importance. For eigners are regarded with a degree of reserve simply because they are such, and discriminated against in certain statutes relating to freeholds. The better class are well educated and hospitable, but in what they please to call society circles there is an exaggeration of English snobbery that is ludicrous to a traveler, and caste lines are drawn with a closeness that is dying out in the mother island. Of course, these matters are in women's hands, as elsewhere, and the fair sex rule supreme.

Something, perhaps it is the climate, nips all enterprises in the bud, and with unrivaled facilities for docks and discharging cargoes, ships lie a mile from shore and with lighters slowly unload. Yet building goes on briskly, several new quarters of the city are filling up with houses that are creditable residences, and the population steadily increases.

It is a bad place for rheumatism. Night and day the skin is working to its utmost capacity, and an unnoticed chill stiffens up muscles that refuse with painful persistence to be loosened. Bright's disease and diabetes gain rapidly under the influence of kidney rest, and remain improved, if not transferred too early to Northern cold. For those who seek dissipation, who ask "what is there to do down there?" and who demand ceaseless occupation, Barbados is no place.

There is no theatre, no amusement of any kind, and the only departure from such mild fun as driving and sailing furnish is taken at a social, well-served dinner or a pleasant dance, where each knows all the other guests.

But for quiet, rest and healthfulness, there is but one island of the Atlantic comparable to this—and at Nassau, Americans find but little change save climate, and that rated at four dollars a day.

When steamship lines shall see fit to cater for passenger trade and charter for the season vessels that can run twelve miles an hour, Barbados will certainly get its share of our nomads, who, restless as they are, know a good thing when they get it, and are faithful in their likes.

George W. Bungay.

HE finishing up of the seeding was in cross-dragging, and by that time the soil was dry and mellow, throbbing with heat and life, and ready to embrace the corn, a much more tender and hesitating germ than the hardy cereals, wheat, oats and barley. The corn-ground was sometimes plowed in the spring, but more often in the fall; and all that remained in preparation was to cultivate it with the seederteeth and harrow it with the great drags till it was as smooth and mellow as a garden.

By this time the earliest sown wheat was flinging a beautiful green shade over the other fields, and the verdant grass came back to clothe the bare and blackened sod; the larks had returned, the geese and ducks had all passed over to the lakes in the farther north; only the solitary crane still wheeled slowly by in his majestic flight-hardly a day passing but his sonorous note fell from the fathomless deeps of the dazzling sky-and the morning symphony of the prairie hens began to die away. The popple groves were deliciously green, their round leaves trembling in the breeze; the oak began to take on a pinkish and brownish tinge, as the tender leaves unfolded toward the point of being as large as a squirrel's ear. At this period it was time to begin planting corn.

This was, in ordinary years, about the third or fifth of May; and one of the pleasantest experiences of the year. The ground, a deep rich loam, unmixed with rocks or gravel, lay out in broad acres, having been harrowed until it was as fine and soft as a flower-bed. Then after it had been marked one way by a contrivance resembling a four-runnered sleigh, which left the field crossed with deep lines four feet apart, it was ready for planting. The custom of the best farmers was to wait and mark it the other way

just ahead of the planters, in order that the grain should fall in the moist earth. In those days the hand-planting had not given way to that of the machine, and cornn-planting was more of an event. We, smallest boys, had been helping to make garden. 'We had raked up the yard, clipped vines, set onions and radishes till we were tired, but when the call came to plant corn we went at it with considerable animation, though it must be said that our enthusiasm was, as a rule, shortlived. Fields for it then ranged from ten to sixty acres, though wheat was still the prevailing crop; and to drop and cover fifty acres of corn was a "considable of a job 'n them days.'

So, early on a fine May morning we might have been seen starting for the field in hilarious mood: the boss, the hired man, a couple of neighbors' sons-stalwart young fellows who are "changing works ", that is, helping us, with the understanding that we are to help them. Sometimes the girls, sisters of the men or daughters to the boss, go along to help. The hand drives the marker, the girls and the smallest boy drop the corn, and the boss and the others with light, sharp flashing hoes follow to cover." The marker starts over the field, crossing the old marks and producing checks or squares; and at the intersections thereof the seed is dropped and covered. The field is brown, rich, and level, half-mile bouts being the usual length; the air is still, and we can hear the merry voices of other similar parties in the neighboring fields. The young fellows choose their "droppers" among the girls, and the work begins right briskly.

Dropping corn is an art. I think at this distance I may say that I was an artist thereat, being able to drop for two cover ers at once, which was phenomenal work. Lest the reader may not be correctly informed as to the method, I will explain a little in detail. First, you must pull off your boots or you will miss the delicious feeling of the warm moist earth, as the