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: CHAPTER III. New Providence. Killarney and Cunningham Lakes. Caves and Caw Earth. The Mermaid's Pool. Nassau—its Streets, Public and Private Buildings, and Population. The Poor and Happy Negroes. Fort Fincastle and its Signals. Grant's Town and other Suburban Villages. Fort Charlotte— its Subterranean Rooms and Charming (hit-look. Lunching at the Expense of the British Queen. Removal of the Old Barracks. Fort Montague. A Luxuriant Growth of Titles. Nassau Harbor and its Bar. Observing the Breakers. Shells and Shell-work. Nassau's Public Library. "This sceptered isle; This earth of majesty; this scat of Mars; This other Eden—demi-paradise."—Shakespeare. " The poor contents him with the care of heaven."—Pope. The island of New Providence, although small in size and greatly deficient in soil, far transcends in importance all the islands with which it is more immediately associated. Nassau, the Bahama capital, reposes in calm, quiet dignity upon the northern slope of the hill that rises to a height of ninety feet above its northern shore, bathes its feet in the sheltered sea, and lifts its municipal head above the heights that overlook Grant's Town. It is to the entire archipelago what Athens was to Greece and the rising sun to the old Persian fire-worshippers. " Paris is France ;"—Nassau is New Providence and the Bahamas. But for its harbor and favorable location, it never would have risen from the rocks, or reposed under the shadows of its tropical and semi-tropical trees. Its superiority as a shelter for ships, caused it to become for these islands the seat and focus of civil, political, ecclesiastical, and military power. Without its geographical and topographical advantages, it is not probable that within its narrow borders a Colonial Governor would ever have had ...