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Updated: June 2, 2025
After leaving Nassau we stood northward for half a day in order to get a safe and proper channel out of the crooked Bahamas, where there is more of shoal than of navigable waters, leaving a score of small islands behind us inhabited only by turtles, flamingoes, and sea birds. But we were soon steaming due south again towards our objective point, the island of Cuba, five hundred miles away.
Wild-fowl dotted the glassy expanse; white cranes and pink flamingoes graced the reedy bars; red-breasted kingfishers flew over with friendly screech. The salt breeze kissed my cheek; the sun shone with the comfortable warmth Northerners welcome in spring; from over the white sand-dunes far below came the faint boom of the ever-restless Gulf.
On the banks were ground owls and woodpeckers. The flamingoes are here in incredible multitudes; they far outnumber all other birds, and as I have said, actually make the shallow waters of the lake look pink. Fortunately they had not been hunted for their plumage and were not timid.
Occasional specimens of the bird-of-paradise are seen, with its long and graceful tail-feathers glittering in the sunshine and presenting an array of bright colors which are not preserved upon this bird in captivity. Tall flamingoes in snowy plumage, just touched with scarlet on either wing, fly lazily over the ponds, or stand by the banks resting quietly upon one long, slim leg.
If we wish to prophesy what will happen, we must imagine things now moderate grown enormous; things now local grown universal; things now promising grown triumphant; primroses bigger than sunflowers, and sparrows stalking about like flamingoes. In other words, we must ask what modern institution has a future before it?
But it was plain enough that he had chosen those flamingoes for their color, and a right choice it was. We could not decide which of the eight murals we liked best. Perhaps, after all, they could not be considered apart. Though each was in itself a unity, the eight completely expressed a big conception. And in detail each canvas was full of delightful bits.
On a distant point stood a troop of flamingoes, drawn up in order like a company of soldiers, their scarlet plumage shining in the sun. Near them was a flock of whooping-cranes each as tall as a full-grown man at intervals uttering their loud trumpet notes.
Flocks of wild duck and snipe are seen in abundance; wild turkeys likewise, with occasionally a group of flamingoes, whose scarlet plumage forms a strikingly dazzling object in the bright sunshine. Indeed, birds of various kinds are about us everywhere.
By Sirius! there was a biped I felt sorry for. He was a little man with sandy hair and whiskers a good deal like mine. Henpecked? well, toucans and flamingoes and pelicans all had their bills in him. He wiped the dishes and listened to my mistress tell about the cheap, ragged things the lady with the squirrel-skin coat on the second floor hung out on her line to dry.
The dwelling of the Captain-General, with the Royal Lottery on the ground floor, had before it sentries in red and white; the Quay de Caballeria, reached through the Plaza of San Francisco, was tempered and pleasant in the early dusk, and at the Quay de Machina was a small garden with grotesque rosy flamingoes and gold-fish in the fountain.
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