with
bouquets for sale, and fancy flowers wrought of shells; these last of
most exquisite workmanship. Specimens of this native shell-work were
sent to the Vienna Exposition, where they received honorable mention,
and were afterwards purchased and presented to the Prince of Wales.
Old gray-haired negroes, with snow-white beards on a black ground,
offered fruits in great variety,--zapotas, mangoes, pineapples, and
grape-fruit. Others had long strings of sponges for sale, wound
round their shoulders like huge snakes; some of these were good, but
many were utterly useless. No one knows this better than the cunning
negroes themselves, but strangers, only touching at Nassau, they do
not expect to see again, and there is proverbially cheating in all
trades but ours. A bright, thrifty-looking colored woman had spread
out her striped shawl upon the ground, and on this arrayed a really
fine collection of conch-shells for sale, delicately polished, and of
choice shapes. When first brought to the surface by the divers they
are not infrequently found to contain pearls imbedded in the palatable
and nutritious meat. These pearls are generally of a pinkish hue, and
greatly prized by the jewelers. Now and then a diver will realize a
hundred dollars for one of them. From the conch-shell also come the
best shell cameos. A smart half-breed offered canes of ebony, lignum
vitae, lance, and orange wood, all of native growth. He was dressed in
a white linen jacket, pantaloons to match, with a semi-military cap,
cocked on one side of his head,--quite a colored dude. The women who
sell native-made baskets are most persistent, but if you purchase of
them make your own change, for they are apt to take money away for
this purpose and to forget to return. Negro nature is frail,
characterized at Nassau by theft and licentiousness, but great crimes
are rare. If you have occasion to hire a boat for a sail in the
harbor, be sure to find and employ "Bushy," a tall, intelligent
darkey, the best boatman and stroke-oar in Nassau.

Bushy showed us what he called a fish-whip, made from the whipray, a
fish quite new to us, but indigenous to these waters. With a body
shaped like a flounder, it has a tail often ten feet long, tapering
from about one inch in thickness at the butt to an eighth of an inch
at the small end. When dried this resembles whalebone, and makes a
good coach-whip. There is a great variety of fish in and about the
Bahamas. We saw, just lan