passengers, and cargoes are sternly interdicted
from the land. Jamaica was in ill name from small-pox, and, as Cuba will
not drop its intercourse with Jamaica, Cuba falls also under the ban.
The commodore had directed a case of cigars from Havana to meet him at
Barbadoes. They arrived, but might not be transferred from the steamer
which brought them, even on board his own frigate, lest he might bring
infection on shore in his pocket. They went on to England, to reach him
perhaps eventually in New York.

Colonel ----'s duties, as chief of the police, obliged him to make
occasional rounds to visit his stations. He recollected his promise, and
he invited me one morning to accompany him. We were to breakfast at his
house on our return, so I anticipated an excursion of a few miles at the
utmost. He called for me soon after sunrise with a light carriage and a
brisk pair of horses. We were rapidly clear of the town. The roads were
better than the best I have seen out of England, the only fault in them
being the white coral dust which dazzles and blinds the eyes. Everywhere
there were signs of age and of long occupation. The stone steps leading
up out of the road to the doors of the houses had been worn by human
feet for hundreds of years. The houses themselves were old, and as if
suffering from the universal depression--gates broken, gardens
disordered, and woodwork black and blistered for want of paint. But if
the habitations were neglected, there was no neglect in the fields.
Sugar cane alternated with sweet potatoes and yams and other strange
things the names of which I heard and forgot; but there was not a weed
to be seen or broken fence where fence was needed. The soil was clean
every inch of it, as well hoed and trenched as in a Middlesex market
garden. Salt fish and flour, which is the chief food of the blacks, is
imported; but vegetables enough are raised in Barbadoes to keep the cost
of living incredibly low; and, to my uninstructed eyes, it seemed that
even if sugar and wages did fail there could be no danger of any sudden
famine. The people were thick as rabbits in a warren; women with loaded
baskets on their heads laughing and chirruping, men driving donkey
carts, four donkeys abreast, smoking their early pipes as if they had
not a care in the world, as, indeed, they have not.

On we went, the Colonel's horses stepping out twelve miles an hour, and
I wondered privately what was to become of our breakfast. We were