Charm Of West Indies

CHARM OF WEST INDIES.

Consul Sawyer Describes Some Odd Customs Prevailing.

United States Consul George Sawter, stationed at Antigua, West Indies, who was in Washington for a few days upon business, in speaking of the recent disaster at Martinique described to a Washington Post reporter some of the odd customs prevailing in the islands. He said:

"A great portion of the charm that a voyage in the West Indies possesses is dee to the fact that within a very short space of time and distance one may change not only the nationality of the country he is in, but the customs, manners and surroundings as well. Emigrants who go to the islands rarely return. They preserve and transmit to their descendants the ways and manners of the fatherland as a part of their patrimony. They have at Martinique and Guadeloupe the most extraordinary apparatus in the shape of a boat that mortal eye ever beheld. It resembles a small coffln made of rough boards, with the top left off. The occupant, however, far from being dead, is the liveliest darky that it is possible to conceive. He paddies his funny boat from shore with his hands and sits upon its bottom as destitute of clothes as when he was born, ready to dive like a frog for the smallest coin that may be thrown from the steamer deck above. Strange to say, he always gets It.

"The hotels on these two islands are a revelation of oddity. Outside they present no especial difference from other houses in the block. Inside one finds a paved court and an immense cage, where fowls of various kinds are awaiting their call to serve as parts of the dinner each day. Why this cage exists none can tell, for its doors are always open, and the fowls amuse themselves by excursions into the various sleeping chambers, to which they have access day and night.

"Another peculiarity of Martinique is that the Frenchmen wear black clothes and silk hats and stroll about the streets under the shade of sun umbrellas wlth the thermometer at 98 at the coolest time of day. I also found the islands singularly destitute of lepers in the streets. In making inquiry I was told that the disease is very rare and that as soon as a case appeared it was promptly isolated."