The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-02-28

on the quays, but still hilarious, sing 1 ing and shouting at the tops of their 1 voices. There goes a tall and stately | Haytian woman, veritable Juno in ebony, dressed in gauzy and trailing
 white, with so little under 1t that the ! "human form divine" stands darkly | confessed, like a yelled statue. On top
 of her queenly head is gaudy turban,
 and on top of the turban is poised l huge flat tray of cakes. Here comes a l white horse (no use looking around here | for the red-headed girl supposed to go with it), with scarlet saddle-cloth and
 other brilliant experimenting, closely fol- | lowed by sheep with a bell tied to it's
 neck. Does is signify a coming circus? 1 Oh, no! The patriarchal rider, with | mutton-chop Whiskers and close-cut ! hair under a broad Panama hat, is only plain MT. Somebody, formerly of Co., penhagen: and it is the fashion here,
 and in many parts of the West Indies,
 for pet sheep to accompany horses, as
 at home coach dogs run under car
 riages. They say it is healthy for both
 horse and sheep to live in the same sta
 ble, and they often become so attached
 to one another as to become almost in
 separable.
 Of Danish rule the casual visitor
 sees little evidence. He observes that relic of darker ages the chain gang, on
 some of the public works, and women
 working side by side with male con- victs The unfortunate females them
 selves seem to care less about it than
 the spectators, shouldering their spades
 and pick-axes with jaunty air, sing ing to the accompaniment of jingling | chains. Tramps fare badly here, for ! the police have an uncomfortable habit of picking up harmless idlers and ex- cling them to the tiny island of St. Jan | there to tend sheep and cattle. We met | a mother who was weeping and wailing l and, like Rachel, refusing to be com | forted, because her son, aged fourteen, | had been sent to St. Jan the day before, merely for the offence of perambulating the streets with nothing on but "out- ing sark' of less than the regulation length! A year or two, more or less, appears to make world of difference in local regulations, for on every door step you see children, some of them perilously near to the "age of discre- tion," playing about, naked as the min-
 ute they were born.
 The laws of these islands are as
 queer and behind the century as those of the District of Columbia, which have been mostly preserved intact since King Georges time The President" of the group who gets his title from presiding over the senate, is also judge and pros ecuting attorney. As in some parts of our own far west, where to steal a horse Is held a greater crime than to kill man. theft is punished with more severity than murder. There is a colo nial council, partly appointed by the king of Denmark and partly elected by the islanders-"to assist the governor general in his arduous duties'-so says the statute book Affairs seem to run smoothly, as on well-oiled wheels, bar ring occasional jars over some quaran- tined steamer, or the killing of an ami mai without permission from the coun- cil
 Of course you must visit the two me diaeval castles of the buccaneers, which are prominent features in the land scape overlooking the harbor. Many shuddery tales are told concerning them, and the frowning structures still | serve as ,bugaboos to Tighten refracto- ry children Away back in the seven teenth century, when Charlotte Amalia was celebrated as a private stronghold, where the sea-rovers came to sell their | plunder and replenish their stores, two | of the most noted 'scourges of the Ca | ribbean Sea- as the old books say, 1 named Bluebeard and Blackboard, had l their homes here. Their respective cas- ties are a considerable distance apart, | each seeming to command the town and | harbor It is pretty stiff climb up to their eyries, though you may go in a carriage part of the way. We did bet ter than that in our visit to Bluebeard | castle, sailing in a yacht close up un- der it's messy towers leaving only a short, but almost perpendicular dis tance to be scaled, hand over hand sailor fashion. It must have been a re- markable structure in its far distant day-this stronghold of Buccaneer of solid stone, round and heavy. with massive towers and parapets, dark dungeons below and lookout atop Now 1t stands on private ground, and though of course unoccu- pied is kept in tolerable repair by the owner. All manner of romantic and terrible tales recur to mind as you wander through it's. gloomy stone foored rooms and corridors, and toll up the steep and narrow staircase. The breeze seems laden with the al phS of captjyas held for ransom and In the hoarse cries of vultures on the you hear the shrieks and groans of those luckless ones whose ears, toes, fingers and other members were Topped off, one by one, and sent as gentle reminders to their friends when he ransom was slow in coming. In one If the lower rooms are dark stains that night we'll be blood; and imagination easily pictures the pirate himself, ap-