tinted sedume, gay and bright and charming from sheer force of health and freshness.

The public squares, parks and gardens of Ponta Delgada invite inspection and comparison with those of any city of its size in Europe or America. But to see the living city in miniature one ought to take a seat in the public park or Largo do Ioâo Franco, and witness the viascope of the ever-changing procession. Before you, pass in review peasants of the farm lands, richly uniformed officers of the local regiments, students in their academic robes, fashionably dressed ladies with their escorts or duennas, priests in soutane and barettas, uniformed policemen, sailors from Japan and the islands of the sea, soldiers and subalterns in parade dress or mufti; women of the middle class, cloaked, or shrouded in a hideous garment called capote è capella. Here also pass of an afternoon young ladies chaperoned by their mothers, beggars whose right hands are stiffened into the horizontal from habitual extension, working girls in picturesque costumes, nursery girls pushing go-carts, and now and then a venerable or sturdy peasant wearing the old time hat with the falling or Havelock neck-shade, or carapuça, as it is called here.

Everything in these Azores that walks on four legs, save rats and cats, is harnessed to a cart and made to earn its food. To a stranger from over the sea it is very amusing to pass a sheep drawing a diminutive wagon and a big husky fellow seated and holding the reins, or a goat pulling a ten-gallon

keg of wine followed by a dog trotting along with a load of salt. Of course there are fairly good horses and mules here, but they are in the liveries or owned by the wealthier class. But the donkey owns the town. His importance entitles him to a capital D, though his villainous looks should condemn him to penal servitude for life. You meet him everywhere: in the lanes, at the church doors, in the public squares, on the streets; he is all over and his awful hee-haw, hee-haws, when first heard startle you as would the war-whoop of a Seneca.

For three hundred years there has been no noticeable immigration to these islands and the population is now pure Azorean, for the sixty years of Spanish occupation was altogether military and did not affect the unity of the race. Four hundred years in the life of an island people is a period sufficiently long to develop racial traits, a racial character and entity. To judge from appearances an infusion of new blood would do no harm, for an insular race when left too long alone must, by an inexorable law of nature, deteriorate. Yet there are many fine-looking men and women here. Fifth Avenue can turn out no better dressed nor cleaner groomed men than those one meets in the streets of Delgada on a Sunday afternoon. The silk hat, kid gloves and cane or silk umbrella are de rigueur, and without which no gentleman will appear in public. The Azorean, like the Spaniard, is never full-dressed unless he is well shaved, and unlike the celebrated De Cossè,

Duke of Brissac, he never shaves himself. Timoleon de Cossè, the impecunious Duke of Brissac, could not afford the luxury of a private barber and disdained to mingle with the common herd in a tonsorial shop. He compromised with his dignity when sharpening his razor by the necessity of doing something. "God has made thee a gentleman, O de Cossè, and the king has made thee a duke. It is, therefore, right and fit," he would repeat, “that thou shouldst have something to do; therefore, thou shalt shave thyself."

When reading the other day the "History of the Norman Conquest,' I ran across an interesting sentence which, in the light of recent happenings, may be questioned. Freeman states that "the blue-eyed races, the daring sons of Japheth, and liberty loving races of Europe are destined to subdue the world." If this prediction be verified the men of these islands will carry no banner nor wave a torch in the triumphal procession, for their eyes are as dark as the prospects of a ruined gambler. When I sailed away from the Azores I carried with me and still retain agreeable memories of a courteous and kindly people, of an educated class of singular affability and courtesy, and of a race working out its temporal and eternal salvation in honesty, industry, and frugality.

CHAPTER V

THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES

"Look out, look out my trusty crew,

Strain every anxious eye;

Though spray and mist obscure the view
We know that land is nigh."

THE moon was yet in the heavens when our ship the Dahome floated into the silent and mysterious island where sea and sky are always bathed in the same strangely tender, weird and purplish haze. We knew that Montserrat, the scourged, grimly submissive, and resigned, was at hand. Straining our eyes we thought we saw the scarped and torn breast of La Soufrière but it was an apparition of clouds. Later the mists floated off and Plymouth, La Soufrière and the sharp conical hills of the solitary island were uncovered. Rising abruptly in wooded summits from a sea of glassy smoothness, Montserrat was resting on the azure waters, under a sky of cerulean loveliness. A panorama of bluffs and narrow precipitous valleys sloping to the sea was uncovered. The cane-fields filled the lowlands, moved up to the sides of the rising ground and covered the hills. We saw a few plantations, the ruins of sugar-mills of other and more prosperous days, and the picturesque little town of Plymouth slowly recovering from cloudburst and hurricane.