white, and the
petals light yellow. Complete, it is about eight inches long, and from
twelve to fifteen in circumference.

While we drove through the suburbs, slatternly, half-clothed family
groups of negroes watched us with curious eyes, and on the road aged
colored men and women were occasionally met, who saluted us with grave
dignity. No one seemed to be at work; sunshine was the only
perceptible thing going on, ripening the fruits and vegetables by its
genial rays, while the negroes waited for the harvest. Like the birds,
they had no occasion to sow, but only to pluck and to eat. There was,
both in and out of the town, a tumble-down, mouldy aspect to the
dwellings, which seemed to be singularly neglected and permitted to
lapse into decay. With the exception of the town of Nassau, and its
immediate environs, New Providence is nearly all water and wilderness;
it has some circumscribed lakes, but no mountains, rivers, or
rivulets. The island is justly famous for the beauty and variety of
its lovely flowers. It is true that the rose is not quite equal in
color, development, and fragrance to ours of the North; Nature has so
many indigenous flowers on which to expend her liberality that she
bestows less attention upon this, the loveliest of them all. The
Cherokee rose, single-leafed, now so rare with us, seems here to have
found a congenial foreign home. In the suburbs of Nassau are many
attractive flowers, fostered only by the hand of Nature. Among them
was the triangular cactus, with its beautiful yellow blossom, like a
small sunflower, supported by a deep green triangular stem.

The pendulous cactus was also hanging here and there on walls and tree
trunks, in queer little jointed, pipe-stem branches. The royal palm,
that king of tropical vegetation, is not very abundant here, but yet
sufficiently so to characterize the place. Its roots resemble those of
asparagus, and are innumerable. Another peculiarity of the palm is
that it starts a full-sized trunk; therefore, not the diameter, but
the height, determines its age, which is recorded by annual concentric
rings clearly defined upon its tall, straight stem.

During the late civil war in the United States, when blockade runners
made this place a port of call and a harbor for refitting, it was by
English connivance practically a Confederate port. The officers and
sailors expended their ill-gotten wealth with the usual lavishness of
the irresponsible, the people of Nas