1. - We landed here yesterday, all well and cable
sound, after a good passage. . . . I am on familiar terms with
cocoa-nuts, mangoes, and bread-fruit trees, but I think I like the
negresses best of anything I have seen. In turbans and loose sea-
green robes, with beautiful black-brown complexions and a stately
carriage, they really are a satisfaction to my eye. The weather
has been windy and rainy; the HOOPER has to lie about a mile from
the town, in an open roadstead, with the whole swell of the
Atlantic driving straight on shore. The little steam launch gives
all who go in her a good ducking, as she bobs about on the big
rollers; and my old gymnastic practice stands me in good stead on
boarding and leaving her. We clamber down a rope ladder hanging
from the high stern, and then taking a rope in one hand, swing into
the launch at the moment when she can contrive to steam up under us
- bobbing about like an apple thrown into a tub all the while. The
President of the province and his suite tried to come off to a
State luncheon on board on Sunday; but the launch being rather
heavily laden, behaved worse than usual, and some green seas stove
in the President's hat and made him wetter than he had probably
ever been in his life; so after one or two rollers, he turned back;
and indeed he was wise to do so, for I don't see how he could have
got on board.
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