The islands were originally settled in rather a curious way. Certain
families, my own amongst them, took shares in the "Bermuda Company,"
and each undertook to plant a little "tribe" there. These "tribes"
seem to have come principally from Norfolk and Lincolnshire, as is
shown by the names of the principal island families. The Triminghams,
the Tuckers, the Inghams, the Pennistones, and the Outerbridges have
all been there since the early sixteen hundreds. Probably nowhere in
the world is the colour-line drawn more rigidly than in Bermuda; white
and coloured never meet socially, and there are separate schools for
white and black children. This is, of course, due to the instinct of
self-preservation; in so small a community it would have been
impossible otherwise for the white settlers to keep their blood pure
for three hundred years. The names of the different parishes show the
families who originally took shares in the Bermuda Company; Pembroke,
Devonshire, Hamilton, Warwick, Paget, and Somerset amongst others.

They are the most delightful islands imaginable. The vegetation is
sub-tropical rather than tropical, and all the islands are clothed
with a dense growth of Bermudian cedar (really a juniper), and of
oleander. I have never seen a sea of deeper sapphire-blue, and this is
reflected not from above, but from below, and is due to the bed of
white coral sand beneath the water. On the dullest day the water keeps
its deep-blue tint. When the oleanders are in bloom, the milk-white
houses, peeping out from this sheet of rose-pink, with the deep indigo
of the sea, and the sombre green of the cedars, make one of the most
enchanting pictures that it is possible to imagine.

Bermuda has distinctly an island climate, which is perhaps fortunate,
as the inhabitants are entirely dependent on rain-water. With a north