o under sail or with oars, officials coming
off in white calico dress, with awnings over the stern sheets and
chattering crews of negroes. Notwithstanding these exotic symptoms, it
was all thoroughly English; we were under the guns of our own
men-of-war. The language of the Anglo-Barbadians was pure English, the
voices without the smallest transatlantic intonation. On no one of our
foreign possessions is the print of England's foot more strongly
impressed than on Barbadoes. It has been ours for two centuries and
three-quarters, and was organised from the first on English traditional
lines, with its constitution, its parishes and parish churches and
churchwardens, and schools and parsons, all on the old model; which the
unprogressive inhabitants have been wise enough to leave undisturbed.

Little is known of the island before we took possession of it--so little
that the origin of the name is still uncertain. Barbadoes, if not a
corruption of some older word, is Spanish or Portuguese, and means
'bearded.' The local opinion is that the word refers to a banyan or fig
tree which is common there, and which sends down from its branches long
hairs or fibres supposed to resemble beards. I disbelieve in this
derivation. Every Spaniard whom I have consulted confirms my own
impression that 'barbados' standing alone could no more refer to trees
than 'barbati' standing alone could refer to trees in Latin. The name is
a century older than the English occupation, for I have seen it in a
Spanish chart of 1525. The question is of some interest, since it
perhaps implies that at the first discovery there was a race of bearded
Caribs there. However this may be, Barbadoes, after we became masters of
the island, enjoyed a period of unbroken prosperity for two hundred
years. Before the conquest of Jamaica, it was the principal mart of our
West Indian trade; and even after that conquest, when all Europe drew
its new luxury of sugar from these islands, the wealth and splendour of
the English residents at Bridgetown astonished and stirred the envy of
every passing visitor. Absenteeism as yet was not. The owners lived on
their estates, governed the island as magistrates unpaid for their
services, and equally unpaid, took on themselves the defences of the
island. Pere Labat, a French missionary, paid a visit to Barbadoes at
the beginning of the eighteenth century. He was a clever, sarcastic kind
of man, with fine literary skill, and describes what h