The drive does something to retrieve the character of the island.  The road is hard and even, overhung with glossy branches of strange trees bearing unknown fruits, and studded on each side with pleasant villas and with negro huts.  There are lovely flowers everywhere, among which the Hibiscus, called South-Sea Rose, and the Oleander, are most frequent, and most brilliant.  We see many tall groves of cocoa-nut, and cast longing glances towards the fruit, which little negroes, with surprising activity, attain and shake down.  A sudden turn in the road discloses a lovely view of the bay, with its wonderful green waters, clear and bright as emerald;—­there is a little beach, and boats lie about, and groups of negroes are laughing and chattering,—­quoting stocks from the last fish-market, very likely.  We purchase for half a dollar a bunch of bananas, for which Ford or Palmer would ask us ten dollars at least, and go rejoicing to our breakfast.

Our host is a physician of the island, English by birth, and retaining his robust form and color in spite of a twenty-years’ residence in the warm climate.  He has a pleasant family of sons and daughters, all in health, but without a shade of pink in lips or cheeks.  The breakfast consists of excellent fried fish, fine Southern hominy,—­not the pebbly broken corn which our dealers impose under that name,—­various hot cakes, tea and coffee, bananas, sapodillas, and if there be anything else not included in the present statement, let haste and want of time excuse the omission.  The conversation runs a good deal on the hopes of increasing prosperity which the new mail-steamer opens to the eyes of the Nassauese.  Invalids, they say, will do better there than in Cuba,—­it is quieter, much cheaper, and the climate is milder.  There will be a hotel, very soon, where no attention will be spared, etc., etc.  The Government will afford every facility, etc., etc.  It seemed, indeed, a friendly little place, with delicious air and sky, and a good, reasonable, decent, English tone about it.  Expenses moderate, ye fathers of encroaching families.  Negroes abundant and natural, ye students of ethnological possibilities.  Officers in red jackets, you young ladies,—­young ones, some of them.  Why wouldn’t you all try it, especially as the captain of the “Karnak” is an excellent sailor, and the kindest and manliest of conductors?

FROM NASSAU TO CUBA.

The breakfast being over, we recall the captain’s parting admonition to be on board by ten o’clock, with the significant gesture and roll of the eye which clearly express that England expects every passenger to do his duty.  Now we know very well that the “Karnak” is not likely to weigh anchor before twelve, at the soonest, but we dare not, for our lives, disobey the captain.  So, passing by yards filled with the huge Bahama sponges, piles of wreck-timber, fishing-boats with strange fishes, red,