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and afternoon with the livestock.

April 12.  Barbados.

Bill Shippen came to our cabin early this morning to report that he had been out in the animal quarters and the male buffalo had managed to turn himself around in his cage, so that feeding and watering were going to be difficult.  Both Bills worked with the animals for an hour, and then we went ashore.

We had been here eight years before, but little has changed.  There is a slight decrease in the amount of annoyance to which tourists are subjected by beggars and street vendors, but not much.  Colored mammies call Bill "Sweetheart" and "Dear", and beg him to buy their grapefruit.  We went first to the post office to send letters home, and then to the Ice House, where Bill bought bananas and papayas for his livestock.  Upstairs in the Ice House is a restaurant, which has been refurnished with metal-tubing modernistic chairs and tables since our last visit.  Here we sat on the verandah, drinking planters' punches, and watching the life in the streets below.  Women carry incredible bundles on their heads, walking flat-footed and swaying slightly under baskets of oranges and grapefruit and tomatoes, balancing cords of firewood, or a tall metal container, like a water-cooler, with mauby, a drink, we were told, made from bitter bark and diluted with water and syrup.

We took a car over to the Aquatic Club, passing, on the way the house where George Washington stayed.  Bill S., Frances and I went swimming, and sat on the beach for a five-minute sunburn - sufficient to turn me bright scarlet.  The water was not as clear as when we were here before; I had promised Frances a wonderful view of marine life through the crystal water, but there was quite a swell, and the water, though perfect as to temperature, was roiled and sea-weedy.

Back to the Ice House for lunch, we ate fried flying fish, small, boneless and delicious, cou-cou (A soggy mass of cornmeal) and okra.

We did a few errands in the afternoon, bought linen handkerchiefs, bay rum, feeding pans for the animals, Scotch whisky at $1.25 a bottle and rum at 60 cents, and drank green swizzles at the Flying Fish Club for nine cents each.  Then back to the Uruguay, where diving boys clamored, not for pennies but for quarters, until the ship sailed at 5 o'clock.