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 roofed with broad coral slabs
an inch thick, whose edges lap upon each other, so that the roof looks
like a succession of shallow steps or terraces; the chimneys are built of
the coral blocks, and sawed into graceful and picturesque patterns; the
ground-floor veranda is paved with coral blocks; also the walk to the
gate; the fence is built of coral blocks--built in massive panels, with
broad capstones and heavy gate-posts, and the whole trimmed into easy
lines and comely shape with the saw. Then they put a hard coat of
whitewash, as thick as your thumb-nail, on the fence and all over the
house, roof, chimneys, and all; the sun comes out and shines on this
spectacle, and it is time for you to shut your unaccustomed eyes, lest
they be put out. It is the whitest white you can conceive of, and the
blindingest. A Bermuda house does not look like marble; it is a much
intenser white than that; and, besides, there is a dainty, indefinable