230
ANTIGUA.
calabash. There are great numbers of ponds in the low parts of the estates, which are filled by the rain and serve for the cattle and domestic water fowls; in wet weather these guts, as they are called, overflow their banks, and often interrupt all communication by carriages on the roads. It is curious to see how arbitrary the unfashionableness of words i s ; if you commend the wing of a duck here, it is a chance your hostess, a pleasing and ladylike woman, will express to you the place of the animal's birth in terms which might make a gentleman of weak nerves leap out of his chair. It sounds odd, but really it is high time to get rid of these boarding-school prejudices, which would deprive an Englishman of his Saxon name for the intestines of humanity. The planters' houses were, I think, the best appointed of any that I saw in the West Indies. Many of them are very old mansions, and constructed upon a more spacious and substantial plan than is generally deemed expedient in these days of mortgages. A small park or lawn is commonly inclosed round the house, and the sugar works, which, however picturesque at a distance, are a very disagreeable appendage at hand, are so well concealed by trees and bushes, that in many cases their existence would not be suspected by a person within the principal building. I saw with great pleasure also the formation of some pretty flower-gar-