Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IN THE CAEIBBEAN SEA In attempting the description of a tour of this kind, there is always a distinct danger of repeating one's self, from the fact that some of the same places are visited again and again. True, such after-visits are usually en passant, but still fresh impressions of the sarfte place are continually imprinting themselves upon the sensoria. Therefore, I feel it necessary to deprecate beforehand any accusation of repetition that may be made by pointing out the extreme possibility of saying the same things over again in a different way by reason of subsequent visits. But I can promise you, reader, that I will do all that in me lies to avoid this. And now let us return to Carlisle Bay, Barbados, and make a fresh start. Our pleasant party, whose society has been so mutually delightful, is somewhat thinned, but enough of them remain to maintain still the kindly Tagus tradition under our genial skipper. We have shipped the first of the curiously conglomerate crowds of which we shall see so much during the next few weeks, and the study of their components, individually and collectively, is a source of great interest and often amusement. Also, we are forcibly reminded of Babel, not merely because of the echoes of German, French, Spanish, etc., but from the amazing varieties of negro perversions of English current among natives of the islands without consideration of colour. These dialects are enough to drive a precisian in language imbecile. For, not content with inflexions and intonations copious enough to turn a Chinese green with envy, every rule of grammar is systematically inverted, and the quaint melange of speech is delivered at hurricane-like speed, making this pwudo-English quite as unintelligible as Sanscrit. I earnestly trust that no one will attemp...