Читать книгу Roraima and British Guiana, With a Glance at Bermuda, the West Indies, and the Spanish Main онлайн

45 страница из 101

In former years Bassin was a place of great resort, but now visitors are scarce, and the wretched building near the wharf, although it still bears the name of hotel, is closed and receives no guests. We had been recommended to take rooms at the Widow Brady’s. This we did, and had no cause to regret it. The widow herself met us before we reached her house. It was only a short distance, but, before we had accomplished it, we knew all the gossip of the island, the sugar prospect, the history of the poor deceased, and had received a general sketch of past events, with a few prophetic remarks concerning the future. A refreshing bath made up for a sleepless night on the schooner, whose night accommodation—unless you preferred to stifle below—consisted of a few rabbit-hutches, or dog-houses, as they are called, with a mattress spread on the floor. After our bath we started on a tour of inspection.

It did not require many minutes to find out that the sleepy old town was not a success as regards its buildings, and that Santa Cruz rum was its chief article of commerce, but its gardens and trees were delightful. There were sapodillas, fine, lofty trees, with clusters of leaves and brown fruit, avocados, trees of the mess-apple, sour-sop, and other insipid fruits; then there were mangoes, tamarinds, and guava bushes, overrun with bright convolvuluses, and still more brilliant ipomæas; roses, jessamine, and honeysuckle grew most luxuriantly, but they were overmatched in profusion, if not in fragrance, by the Mexican wreath plant, with pretty pink flowers like clusters of coral, and by the quiscualis, whose sweet jessamine-like flowers—white, pink, and red on the same stalk—peeped out in hundreds from their glossy green hiding places.