Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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BERMUDA, FROM GIBBS HILL.

It is the sea round the Bermudas, more than the islands themselves, perhaps, that give its beauty. Everywhere the water is wonderfully clear and transparent, while the land is broken up into narrow inlets and headlands, and bays and promontories, nooks and corners, running here and there in capricious and ever-varying forms. The oleander, with their bright blossoms, are so abundant, almost to the water’s edge, that the Bermudas might be called the “Oleander Isles.”

The Bermuda convict, in Trollope’s time, seemed to be rather better off than most English labourers. He had a pound of meat—good meat, too, while the Bermudians were tugging at their teeth with tough morsels; he had a pound and three-quarters of bread—more than he wanted; a pound of vegetables; tea and sugar; a glass of grog per diem; tobacco-money allowed, and eight hours’ labour. He was infinitely better off than most sailors of the merchant service.

THE NORTH ROCK, BERMUDA.

St. George, the military station of the colony, commands the only entrance among the islands suitable for the passage of large vessels, the narrow and intricate channel which leads to its land-locked haven being defended by strong batteries. The lagoons, and passages, and sea canals between the little islands make communication by water as necessary as in Venice. Every one keeps a boat or cedar canoe. He will often do his business on one island and have his residence on a second. Mark Twain has a wonderful facility for description; and his latest articles, “Random Notes of an Idle Excursion,” contain a picturesque account of the Bermudas, and more particularly of Hamilton, the leading port. He says that he found it a wonderfully white town, white as marble—snow—flour. “It was,” says he, “a town compacted together upon the sides and tops of a cluster of small hills. Its outlying borders fringed off and thinned away among the cedar forests, and there was no woody distance of curving coast or leafy islet sleeping on the dimpled, painted sea but was flecked with shining white points—half-concealed houses peeping out of the foliage. * * * There was an ample pier of heavy masonry; upon this, under shelter, were some thousands of barrels, containing that product which has carried the fame of Bermuda to many lands—the potato. With here and there an onion. That last sentence is facetious, for they grow at least two onions in Bermuda to one potato. The onion is the pride and the joy of Bermuda. It is her jewel, her gem of gems. In her conversation, her pulpit, her literature, it is her most frequent and eloquent figure. In Bermudian metaphor it stands for perfection—perfection absolute.