sly not Bermudian. His rear was so marvelously bepatched with
colored squares and triangles that one was half persuaded he had got it
out of an atlas. When the sun struck him right, he was as good to follow
as a lightning-bug. We hired him and dropped into his wake. He piloted
us through one picturesque street after another, and in due course
deposited us where we belonged. He charged nothing for his map, and but
a trifle for his services: so the Reverend doubled it. The little chap
received the money with a beaming applause in his eye which plainly said,
"This man's an onion!"

We had brought no letters of introduction; our names had been misspelled
in the passenger-list; nobody knew whether we were honest folk or
otherwise. So we were expecting to have a good private time in case
there was nothing in our general aspect to close boarding-house doors
against us. We had no trouble. Bermuda has had but little experience of
rascals, and is not suspicious. We got large, cool, well-lighted rooms
on a second floor, overlooking a bloomy display of flowers and flowering
shrubscalia and annunciation lilies, lantanas, heliotrope, jasmine,
roses, pinks, double geraniums, oleanders, pomegranates, blue
morning-glories of a great size, and many plants that were unknown to me.

We took a long afternoon walk, and soon found out that that exceedingly
white town was built of blocks of white coral. Bermuda is a coral
island, with a six-inch crust of soil on top of it, and every man has a
quarry on his own premises. Everywhere you go you see square recesses
cut into the hillsides, with perpendicular walls unmarred by crack or
crevice, and perhaps you fancy that a house grew out of the ground there,
and has been removed in a single piece from the mold. If you do, you
err. But the material for a house has been quarried there. They cut
right down through the coral, to any depth that is convenient--ten to
twenty feet--and take it out in great square blocks. This cutting is
done with a chisel that has a handle twelve or fifteen feet long, and is
used as one uses a crowbar when he is drilling a hole, or a dasher when
he is churning. Thus soft is this stone. Then with a common handsaw
they saw the great blocks into handsome, huge bricks that are two feet
long, a foot wide, and about six inches thick. These stand loosely piled
during a month to harden; then the work of building begins.

The house is built of these blocks; it is