Six months in the West-Indies, in 1825

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46

BARBADOS.

and Bridge Town; it is a very beautiful excursion, and the wind rarely fails either way. The population of the place is colored in a very large proportion, and you may walk some time in the street before you will meet a white or black man or woman. The church is very neat, but the pulpit is a fathom too high—a common fault in the West Indies, where they fancy, the higher the preacher is placed, the more sublime will the sermon be. To be sure, by this arrangement every class of persons must of necessity understand the clergyman, which is something at all events. The view from Dover Hill, a fortress and signal station, half a mile from the town, is very interesting. The houses are nearly lost in the foliage of gardens, and the almost painted sea shines in still sky-blue between the slender stems of the thousands of cocoa-nut trees which form a green fence upon the shore. One great inconvenience in travelling along the leeward side of the island is the sand, which especially in Speight's is so deep, that a heavy carriage is sure to stick fast in it. What with the whiteness of this sand, and the shelving tables of land to the east, which keep off every breath of wind, it is one of the most oppressive rides in Barbados. I thought it would have given me the ophthalmia. As you pass along you see the remnants of old forts at very short intervals, with a great number of guns, most of them honeycombed, dismounted, or even half


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