Feuilleton: from Martinique to France by the steamships of the Compagnie des Indes-occidentales, by A. de Maynard (Globe)

We arrived in Bermuda in the first days of February. Le Trident was to remain there for three days to pick up a full cargo of coal. No sooner had we dropped anchor, than the Governor of Bermuda's canoe arrived on board, with an English commodore and the Governor's aide-de-camp in it. His Excellency Colonel Reid, Governor of Bermuda for H.M. Queen Victoria, having learned that Le Trident had on board, as a passenger, a senior officer of the French navy, hastened to send his aide-de-camp to ask him to do him the honor of disembarking at his hotel. The aide-de-camp was instructed to extend this invitation to any Frenchmen who might be on board (...) I must confess that the Commander Des-Hauteurs and I were astounded by this delicate attention at such a time, with all the shamefully insulting things that were being said in France about England and the English.

The government hotel is located on a small hill between the shore and the town of Hamilton, so that the governor can, from his living room, watch both the sea and the ships that cross it, as well as the town and its inhabitants. At the foot of this hill there is a fine house surrounded by cedars, the only trees that the land of Bermuda welcomes, and destined to serve as a home to the admiral commanding the naval forces in the West Indies, when duty brings this general officer to this corner of his station. When we came, the house was occupied by the wife of Admiral Adam, head of the present station. (...) Colonel Reid himself came to receive us on shore, and once he had introduced us to his family, we were part of the house. The next day, the officers of the 20th, garrisoned in Hamilton, gave a ball to the belles of the city.

Hamilton is a double row of painted wooden houses, their roofs flat and beautifully whitewashed to receive and conserve rainwater, lined up like soldiers on parade along a delightful harbor, and, yet, with so little, pretends to be a city. Nothing could be more picturesque than these colorful houses, shaded by cedars, sitting with a false air of Swiss chalets along this sea so transparent that the eye probes its depths.

It was from this place that Moore said:
The morn was lovely, every man was still,
When the first perfume of a cedar hill,
Sweetly awaked us, and with smiling charms
The fairy harbour woo’d us to its arms.