reed to leave this conundrum
for future statesmen to wrangle over.

What a bright and startling spectacle one of those blazing white
country palaces, with its brown-tinted window-caps and ledges, and green
shutters, and its wealth of caressing flowers and foliage, would be in
black London! And what a gleaming surprise it would be in nearly any
American city one could mention, too!

Bermuda roads are made by cutting down a few inches into the solid white
coral--or a good many feet, where a hill intrudes itself--and smoothing
off the surface of the road-bed. It is a simple and easy process. The
grain of the coral is coarse and porous; the road-bed has the look of
being made of coarse white sugar. Its excessive cleanness and whiteness
are a trouble in one way: the sun is reflected into your eyes with
such energy as you walk along that you want to sneeze all the time. Old
Captain Tom Bowling found another difficulty. He joined us in our walk,
but kept wandering unrestfully to the roadside. Finally he explained.
Said he, "Well, I chew, you know, and the road's so plagued clean."

We walked several miles that afternoon in the bewildering glare of the
sun, the white roads, and the white buildings. Our eyes got to paining
us a good deal. By and by a soothing, blessed twilight spread its cool
balm around. We looked up in pleased surprise and saw that it proceeded
from an intensely black negro who was going by. We answered his military
salute in the grateful gloom of his near presence, and then passed on
into the pitiless white glare again.

The colored women whom we met usually bowed and spoke; so did the
children. The colored men commonly gave the military salute. They borrow
this fashion from the soldiers, no doubt; England has kept a garrison
here for generations. The younger men's custom of carrying small canes
is also borrowed from the soldiers, I suppose, who always carry a cane,
in Bermuda as everywhere else in Britain's broad dominions.

The country roads curve and wind hither and thither in the delightfulest
way, unfolding pretty surprises at every turn: billowy masses of
oleander that seem to float out from behind distant projections like the
pink cloud-banks of sunset; sudden plunges among cottages and gardens,
life and activity, followed by as sudden plunges into the somber
twilight and stillness of the woods; flitting visions of white
fortresses and beacon towers pictured against the sky on remote
hilltops; gli