Located in the lovely St. Mary's Parish, the little town of Port Maria is a busy shipping port for bananas and coconuts (see text, page 31). The negroes here, as elsewhere in the West Indies, are a happy-go-lucky people, to whom work is but a necessary evil and a means of obtaining additional necessities or creature comforts. The dried meat of the coconut is known as copra, a Spanish adaptation of the Malay koppara. From it is extracted a valuable oil used in the manufacture of marine soap, that forms a lather in sea water. The meaty residue, after the oil is extracted, is used for making candles. Kingston is the center of island activity from the standpoint of both government and business. The streets are clean, well ordered, and dotted with traffic officers, for even in this Garden of Eden the fiery gasoline steed races its way about. The shops are many and varied, and those catering to the white trade have excellent qualities of merchandise, home-grown as well as imported, from England. There is no bargaining in these firstchop emporiums, for the prices are fixed and fair and you are waited upon by grave-miened colored clerks who have all the suavity and dignity of a Regent Street draper. It is a different story, however, in the cheaper stores, for in this stratum bargaining seems to be the natural order. Half the first price is the real selling figure, but you will not get the goods at that unless you start low. Finally, if you don't tire before the salesman does, you get your desires at 50 per cent of his first price. Visitors in foreign climes usually feel it necessary to visit the market place; why, no one really knows, but here it is worth while. The market women are a cheery lot, and while displaying their small stock of really tropical products-pepper pods, cocoa, sour sops, breadfruit, mango, pimentos, and "jackass rope," as native tobacco is termed, together with a score of fruits and vegetables unknown except by name to the northern visitor-they carry on a cross-fire of good humor. They can spot a Yankee with the eye of a sharpshooter, and will smilingly assert that they "love America" and that you would "look most handsome in one of the fine Jipijapa straw hats!" (see page 6). All sorts of strange things are offered here, from a shark's backbone strung on metal and turned down until it is fashioned into a cane, lace bark whips-the butt and long plaited lash made from one piece of wood-to dagger-work fans, coolie bangles, and fern albums, and few visitors can long resist the salesmanship of the native Jamaican in her own market. The island was rich in native woodworkers especially skilled in furniture The natives call the island-grown tobacco jackass rope, probably because it is strong and tough (see text, page 16). Its making a generation or two ago. wealth of hardwoods, especially mahogany, produced a plentiful supply of raw material, but the skilled carvers could not compete with the cheap importations from the United States and the art, as such, has dwindled and is practically dead to-day. THE CHARM OF THE ISLAND COUNTRYSIDE The duty of seeing the market over, it is a joy to step into a "buggy," as the horse-drawn taxi is locally known, and ride out into the suburban area, where the odors of tropical fruits and flowers and the songs of brightly colored birds are welcome after the turmoil of the marts of trade, and if interested in human nature one can learn much of the humble life of the island by encouraging his Jehu to talk. He is generally willing if you don't make fun of him or his island home. We pass the lordly Myrtlebank Hotel, fronting on the beautiful harbor, with its tropical architecture, its enticing gardens, shade, and creature comforts-both liquid and solid-and presently are driving up South Camp Road. What lovely little villas and bungalows, each with its own rose-embowered gate and its own winsome name! Far ahead rises Blue Mountain Peak, back of you the azure Caribbean, to your right a broad marine plain, and to your left the white and green capital city. The sun shines hot, but the Doctor comes valiantly to your relief. Don't know the Doctor? Well, every Jamaican loves him. For he is the fresh wind that blows from the sea to the Blue Mountains every day-a sort of perpetual electric fan, whose breezes temper the white sunshine. At night the Undertaker takes the Doctor's place a cooling wind from the mountain. But the Undertaker deserves no such lugubrious name. Perhaps he is the victim of that same superstition that used to tell us that we must shut the night air out of our sleeping apartments on the theory that it was "poisonous." At any rate, he is a great friend of the American traveler, for if you get a room that faces the Blue Mountains the Undertaker will assure you a cool night. The British Government has con A NATIVE BASKET MAKER EN ROUTE TO MARKET His wares are well made and attractive. They can be purchased, filled with tropical fruit, in the markets for a shilling or two. structed what are considered the best public buildings in the West Indies to house its activities in Jamaica. The King's House is not in Kingston proper, but about 4 miles out on the highway leading from Matilda Corner to Half Way Tree. It is built of reinforced concrete and situated in grounds 177 acres in extent, a large part of which has been transformed by the landscape gardener into a tropical wonderland. The public buildings of the colonial government occupy two blocks on King Street and were designed by Sir Charles Nicholson. They represent the best of British architecture modified to suit tropical conditions. library of colonial literature and its museum of zoological and botanical specimens, is doing its best for the preservation of the valuable historical collections of the island. Among the interesting relics preserved is the bell of the old church of Port Royal, salvaged after the great earthquake of 1692. The Institute houses also an interesting series of oil portraits of Jamaican governors and colonial heroes (see page 41). Yet, to the lover of the mellow-with-age and the historic through association, it is at Spanish Town rather than in the present capital's public buildings that one finds the greater charm. The old House of Assembly, surviving the days when representa The Institute of Jamaica, with its tive government existed in the island; the |