their two hundred years' association with the French, something of
that innate good taste which seems the birthright of most French
people, and they show this in their very individual and becoming
costumes. The Martinique negress is, as a rule, a handsome
bronze-coloured creature, and she wears a full-skirted, flowing dress
of flowered chintz or cretonne, with a _fichu_ of some
contrasting colour over her breast. She hides her woolly locks under
an ample turban of two shades, one of which will exactly match her
_fichu_, whilst the other will either correspond to or contrast
with the colour of her chintz dress, thus producing what the French
term "une gamme de couleur," most pleasing to the eye, and with never
a false note in it. Beside these comely, amply breasted bronze
statues, the British West Indian negress, with her absurd travesty of
European fashions, and her grotesque hats, cuts, I am bound to say, a
very poor figure indeed.

The flourishing little island of Montserrat has one peculiarity. The
negroes all speak with the strongest of Irish brogues. Cromwell
deported to Montserrat many of the "Malignants" from the West of
Ireland, who acquired negro slaves to cultivate their sugar and
cotton. These negroes naturally learnt English in the fashion in which
their masters spoke it. The white men have gone; the brogue remains. I
was much amused on going ashore in the Administrator's whaleboat, he
being an old acquaintance from the Co. Tyrone, to hear his jet-black
coxswain remark, "'Tis the lee side I will be going, sorr, the way
your Honour will not be getting wet, for them back-seas are mighty
throublesome." This in Montserrat was unexpected.

There is a curious uninhabited rock lying amongst the Virgin Islands.
It is quite square and box-like in shape, and is known as "The Dead