The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-07-03

have been so long superseded by those
 of another race and tongue. Scattered everywhere over the hills you see the
 handsome establishments of wealthy
 English planters. nestled among grove!
 of orange and banana, palm and cocoa
 nut. Sugar houses and tall factory
 chimneys are everywhere. and from ev-
 cry plantation conica! white towers
 arise-as striking features in the land
 scape as the oil derrick8 iE Southern Texas. These towers are ancient wind mills. long since supplarted by steam.
 Landing at Basse-TeTre. a few steps brings you to sort of rotunda, three
 hundred feet or so ir diameter. with a
 large stone drinking fountain in the middle From this circle the town radiates like a haif-wheel whose spokes are streets and this fountain the hub. Farther on is fine public square, con- taining the Berkley fountain-a hand some memorial Of former president. It contains also the equally celebrated banyan tree, whose spreading roots threaten to overturn the fountain, as if jealous of the rival attraction. The im- mense overshadowing top, dropping its branches nearly to the ground, occupies very large space; but, unlike the banyans of the Orient, 1t has only one trunk Its peudantS-which after the manner of their kind, reach down from the limbs and take root, becoming trunks with tropical rapidity, the lat ter putting forth off-shoots which speedily become other trunks, and so on are carefully cut as soon as they ap- pear; or otherwise the tree would pres
 ently occupy the netire park, if not the whole town.
 The narrow streets of Basse-Terre are lined with two-story houses, the better ones having the lower story of stone with balconies built out on the second l floor the width of the sidewalk. All the people of consequence, without excep- tion, live in the neighborhood of Berke- ley Square, as you go beyond, the houses rapidly deterioate, until on the outskirts of the town only wretched cabins are seen, perched up on stakes three feet above ground, the space un- derneath filled with mud. filth and rub bish, in which black babies, black pigs and mangy dogs wallow together. One of the side streets seems to be given over exclusively to the laundry busi- ness, the newly washed clothes spread out on stones between the buildings to bleach in the hot sun. The population of Basse-Terre is estimated at 1000, and that of the island 2S,OOO, not more than 2,000 being white.
 Everything in St. Kits looks tropical and queer in foreign eyes-not only the trees and flowers, and the strange fruits exposed for sale, but the people themselves are as distinctly un-English as it is possible to imagine. Gaudily turbaned negresses preambulate the streets, balancing all sorts of merchant disc on their heads, from bloody liver bIackened with flies to delicate sweet meats of their own manufacture. The graceful, swinging stride of these bur- den-bearers is in agreeable contrast to the lettering gait of the colored ladies you are constantly meeting, who go mincing along with indescribable airs on absurdly high-heeled French slip pers. Universally worn without stock ings), their bodies pinched by French corsets and heads disfigured by tiowery French millinery-or rather, the "crea- tions" of the milliner are disfigured by their broad-nosed, thick-lipped coun- tenances. If one must choose between classes. give us the w-down, untaught and unpretending daughters, of Ham every time, instead of their sisters who have acquired a thin veneer of white folks ways The laboring women of St. Kitts are picturesque creations under their jaunty turbans in all the colors ot the rainbow, and their loose white gowns (Iow-necked Mother Hubbard's) caught up half way to the knees by a sash tied tightly around the hips. The negro women greatly outnumber the men in the streets-perhaps because so many of men are at work on planta- tions. They speak sort of monkey gibberish impossible to understand by those unfamiliar with the patois. One might call it -Terred English were not puns in such bad taste. The island blacks appear to be a good-nat- ured well-mannered lot-the men in variably touching their ragged hats and the women lowing and showing all | their worries to the passing stranger; but there are enough of them to ann1- hilate the white residents in the twink | ling of an eye should they take it into Etheir heads to do so. There are no regu- l lar troops here in these times of peace only one company of volunteer cavalry, consisting of a few men who are too widely scattered to be available in sud- | den emergency. The police are all black. but clean, ,well-dressed and civil enough. Their pay is twelve dollars a month-extraor wages in Basse- Terre Men workers on the plantations receive twenty-five cents day, women workers, twenty cents. Roustabouts, | (also full-blooded blacks, or nearly sol, are sometimes paid as high as fifty cents day, but their jobs are intermit- tent. The more genteel of the colored race carry on the affairs of the island
 filling the clerkships and the offices, teaching the schools, printing and edit ing the only newspaper and performing all the mechanical labor Though near Iy all the black folk are shouting Methodists it is said that very few of them are regularly married by the church It costs thirty shillings to pay the parscn-mora tran months Wag s
 and therefore such an extravaganza is not to be thought of They have sim- pie ceremony of their own, which to them is sacred, and I am told that it Is seldom violated. You meet plenty of small Samboes and Dinahs in the streets, wearing nothing but "a. holiday