Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1884-01-22
An Island of Pretty Women.


The grass grows green and rank. and
the perfume of the rose fills the air, even
In the bleakest days Of the bleak autumn
IN this little sea-encireled paradise, writes
a correspondent from st. Helier's. on the
island of Jersey. There are hundreds Of
beautiful lanes winding among the val
leys and hillsides, with trees on either
side growing so close together that no
sunshine can ever penetrate through the
interlacing bOughs to the hard. smooth.
beaten track beneath; miles of white
shingly beach, on which the sand
is as fine as sifted flour, and is
left by the receding tides as hard
as cement; quaint little farm
houses embowered in sweet-sInelling
shrubbery and flowers, and acres Of moor
land that is carpeted the year round with
heliotropes, petunIas and marguerites.
A blue-gray sea rises and falls around the
island AZ feet. 'sSweet little Jersey:v
Dear old st. Helier's," is the afTectionate
way in which the people here speak of
their island home and its chief town of
$4,000 souls. st. Helier's is a queer old
place. Its streets are narrow and crowd
ed. Massive earthWOrl.s and miles of
masonry crown the hills about, and rem
der the place apparently impregnable
against the foe.
The Channel Islands, and particularly
Jersey, possess much Of interest to the
stranger, but the browning glory Of Jer-
sey is the beauty of her women. For gem
eral cOmeliness they would readily be
awarded prize in any competition Of
feminine grace. Rare, creamy complex
ions that would put the bloom on the
peach to blush, figures made graceful
and sinewy by bodily toll, with rather
strongly cut features, eyes like sloes, and
lustrous dark hair, the girls met on the
streets Of st. Helier's seem, to the
stranger, the persOnfcatiOn Of womanly
independence, beauty and maidenly re-
serve. The soft white mists that wrap
the island every night from sundown to
sunrise give them carnation cheeks. The
toll that brings with it the active, healthy
body is due to causes which will enlist on
the side of these women the sympathies
of true manhood. 1t is because of the
woful dearth Of men in Jersey that the wo-
men do all the work. Where you meet
one man in these tOrtuOus streets of st.
Helier's you meet ten women.
Out among the green farms this proper
ton OF the sexes is even more painfully
apparent. The heavy, ungainIY carts on
the country roads are almost without ex-
ceptiOn driven by women, and handsome
women, too. Groups Of cherry-cheeked
girls may be seen in the wayside orchards,
some picking apples from the trees, others
stralning at the rude cider presses. The
little fields, with their luxuriant growth
of turnips, cabbages and rutabagas,
are all tended by women, while
the blooming flowers in the house
yards show in their rich variety the evil
dence of woman's care and attention.
None but women are to be seen in the
big public market of st. Heier's-women
buying and women selling. What men
you see are either too young or toe old
and decrepit-bOys who have not started
out in life, or old sea captains who have
come home to end their days, smelling OF
salt cod and full of "reminiscences of
stormy voyages to Buenos Ayres, to Aus
tralia, or through the China seas.