The record-union., 1894-09-20

receive cable saying that the Prince
OF Wales would be over in the Campa-
MIA to spend week with him. NJ loses
made no bones about having everything
taken out OF the room we were TO occupy
and making a thorough search for in
sects. He even pulled up some OF the
floor boards and pOked into the thatch.
The first thing he. unearthed was the
most savage-looking tarantula | ever
saw. The fellow when in motion look ed
quite as large as the crown of a Derby
hat; but when we killed him he coiled
up into a lump about as big as a fist.
After killing the ground spider, as the
negroes call it, Moses found a painful of
cenUpeGes and scorpions in the walls and
thatch and drove out few hundred small
lizards. | did not mind the lizards, for
they are in all West Indian houses, as
tame and playful as kittens. They are
not Shiny like our northern lizards, but
clean, and always very pretty. They are
precisely like the chameleons the New
ork girls had fancy for wearing a Jew
months ago.
My host, the 'Maws Colonel would
not hear of my leaving Montserrat until
he had taken me over to see the neigh
boring island of Redonda; and Tor this
purpose he borrowed Il small schooner
from a friend, just as we might borrow a
carriage or bicycle. 1t was delightful
SAIL OF about two hours from Montserrat
heuonda Is an immense solitary rock
cropping up out of the water rearing it's
SOLID crest 200 and 800 feet above the sea
level. 1t IS nearly square, and as its top
Is almost fiat, with a single slope to the
southwark, 1t looks like an immense
fortress. 1t is said to measure halt mile
IN each direction. Redonda has caused
great regret 10 many Englishmen and
Americans. On the summit is a great
deposit OF phosphate rock, anu the min
Ing OF tins rock has promised large profits
10 various companies, with very unSatis-
factory results. The rock belongs TO
Great Britain, and an English company is
a. present struggling with this phosphate.
Ine company Keeps twelve men on the
Island, and every six months ship carries
over provisions for them, and takes away
LOAD oi phosphate. l should consider it
worth at least 100000 a year to live in
such desolate place, 800 ieet in the air,
but the men are apparently satisfied with
their 81 % day. They have three small
houses to live in, all securely chained to
the rock, and no hurricane yet has been
able to blow them away, though the heav-
lest gaze we know OF here would pass for
a gentle breeze in that exposed situation.
The latest news of these exiies was
about four months old, and they were
eager to hear from home. And the one
thing that every man of them desired to
know first was whether Great Britain
was still at peace with the world. IL Was
not an exhibition of intense patriotism.
for every countenance fell when the
men were told that her majesty had no
war on her hands at present. 1t was not
the piping times of peace they were
anxious for. but the hustle of war.
1--WE don't fight people who wear
Clothes one of the men, an Englishman,
said to me in disgust. We've not fought
nobody but naked savages in the last 'arf
a century,
why they were so anxious TO have
their country at war was soon made
plain. Men are too plenty in the British
Isles, and war thins them out and takes
many away to foreign countries, and
makes business lively. Purely for BUSH
ness reasons the Briton, particularly the
colonial Briton, is anxious for a real
good bloody war. These hermits of Re-
donda are not alone in this desire As
l went further among the British islands
l found more of the same feeling: so
much more that it seemed to me that the
part of the English Church service in
which thanks are offered because we are
at peace with all other nations is in need
of revision.
1t was pitiful to see how these twelve
lonely men clung to US and tried to pre-
vent us from leaving them after we had
eaten the dinner of canned food that they
had insisted upon preparing for u.s.
Some of them wrote hurried letters for
us to mail in Montserrat, for of course
they have no mails at Redonda. But we
had to hasten away, and my last memory
OF the rock is seeing them grouped on
one OF the highest points waving their
farewells with arms and hats and hand
kerchiefs. New York Sun.