A Queer Race: The Story of a Strange People — page 137: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

184 A QUEER RACE. i bowed, and said I should be delighted to teach her anything in my power. | ‘he ball was a great; success. The orchestra consisted of a flute, a clarionet, a key-bugle, a Carib guitar, and a set of Pan’s-pipes. The flute seemed to be new, but the clarionet and bugle looked old enough to have belonged to the bandsmen of the Hecate or the Santa Anna. Yet they produced very fair music, and though the men played without notes, they had a great variety of airs, some of which struck me as being singularly wild ‘and beautiful. — My uniform made quite a sensation, and, judging by the compliments I received, it was much admired. Be- — fore I had been many minutes in the room I booked sev- eral engagements; for,as Fair Island ladies deem it not unmaideniv to ask men (on occasion) to be their partners for life, they naturally see no impropriety in asking them to take part ina dance. ‘They were all tall, fine women; not a few were very well favored, barring the queerness of their complexion, and two or three were as fair as Queen Mab herself. They were liveiy, too, and wonder- fully graceful in their movements, dancing with a zest and energy unknown tothe languid beauties of European ballrooms. Being, moreover, the descendants of the Hecate’s officers (the descendants of able-bodied and ordinary seamen and warrant-officers not being admitted into society), they were intelligent, and, considering their opportunities, well educated. Most of them had read Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, ‘‘ Plutarch’s Lives,” “Robinson Crusoe,” and ‘‘ Pamela,” and were acquainted with the leading facts of European history up to about 1740. From that time forward, so far as regards the outer world, their minds, like the minds of Fair Island- ers generally, were a blank; and it is hardly possible for those who have not tried it to realize the difficulty of Keeping up a conversation with people who know nothing of George III. and Napoleon, Nelson and Wellington, the Reform Bill and Queen Victoria, the Indian Mutiny and the American Civil War, Bismarck and the G. O. M.; who have never seen a daily newspaper, a monthly re- View, or a railway; never heard of the United States, Australia, New Zealand, or the Suez Canal, lighting by gas or printing by steam, and whose knowledge of fiction is limited to ‘‘ Robinson Crusoe” and “ Pamela.” comichbooks.co