Flatts Village arose at the crossroads between Smith’s Parish and Hamilton Parish, and in the twentieth century would become the site of the public Aquarium, Natural History Museum, and Zoo, an institution that easily eclipsed Devil’s Hole. Flatts embraced a picturesque inlet through which the ocean fed Harrington Sound, a large saltwater lagoon. Water rushes in or out beneath the Flatts bridge at every change of tide.

He slighted the usual tourist sights in the “Idle Excursion,” but his notebook showed that he visited Devil’s Hole, the oldest attraction on the Islands. “Devil’s Hole,” his note read, “angel fish, blue & yellow.” The collapsed sea cavern, also known as Neptune’s Grotto or Groupers’ Grotto, had been a commercial operation since the 1830s. Situated by Harrington Sound, in Smith’s Parish, it was fed instead by a narrow passage to the ocean.

The country roads curve and wind hither and thither in the delightfulest way, unfolding pretty surprises at every turn: billowy masses of oleander that seem to float out from behind distant projections like the pink cloud-banks of sunset; sudden plunges among cottages and gardens, life and activity, followed by as sudden plunges into the somber twilight and stillness of the woods; flitting visions of white fortresses and beacon towers pictured against the sky on remote hilltops; glimpses of shining green sea caught for a moment through opening headlands, then lost again; more woods and soli

Bermuda roads are made by cutting down a few inches into the solid white coral—or a good many feet, where a hill intrudes itself—and smoothing off the surface of the road-bed. It is a simple and easy process. The grain of the coral is coarse and porous; the road-bed has the look of being made of coarse white sugar. Its excessive cleanness and whiteness are a trouble in one way: the sun is reflected into your eyes with such energy as you walk along that you want to sneeze all the time. Old Captain Tom Bowling found another difficulty.

Clemens had confused the population of Hamilton, which Harper’s Monthly estimated at no more than 2,000, with the entire population of the Islands, given in the census of 1871 as 12,121. Nor were the races equally divided; the census showed 7,396 colored persons and 4,725 whites:   The women and young girls, black and white, who occasionally passed by, were nicely clad, and many were elegantly and fashionably so.

We took a long afternoon walk, and soon found out that that exceedingly white town was built of blocks of white coral. Bermuda is a coral island, with a six-inch crust of soil on top of it, and every man has a quarry on his own premises. Everywhere you go you see square recesses cut into the hillsides, with perpendicular walls unmarred by crack or crevice, and perhaps you fancy that a house grew out of the ground there, and has been removed in a single piece from the mold. If you do, you err. But the material for a house has been quarried there.

Here and there on the country roads we found lemon, papaw, orange, lime, and fig trees; also several sorts of palms, among them the cocoa, the date, and the palmetto. We saw some bamboos forty feet high, with stems as thick as a man’s arm. Jungles of the mangrove tree stood up out of swamps; propped on their interlacing roots as upon a tangle of stilts. In drier places the noble tamarind sent down its grateful cloud of shade. Here and there the blossomy tamarisk adorned the roadside. There was a curious gnarled and twisted black tree, without a single leaf on it.

We saw no bugs or reptiles to speak of, and so I was thinking of saying in print, in a general way, that there were none at all; but one night after I had gone to bed, the Reverend came into my room carrying something, and asked, “Is this your boot?” I said it was, and he said he had met a spider going off with it. Next morning he stated that just at dawn the same spider raised his window and was coming in to get a shirt, but saw him and fled.

Second Trip: Sunday, May 20 to Thursday, May 24, 1877
This visit to the islands was the subject of a piece published in 1877, “Some Rambling Notes on an Idle Excursion”, written for the Atlantic magazine, Oct. to Jan. 1878

Its story began with a “very greate storme or hurricane,” as recorded by Sir George Somers, the admiral of a fleet of nine vessels dispatched from England in 1609 to relieve the famished colonists of Jamestown. The storm separated the ships. Most of them sailed on to Virginia, but the flagship Sea Venture took on nine feet of water before its crew discovered any leaks. Hope nearly vanished before Sir George spied land on July 28. Sir George lodged his sinking ship between two large rocks about a quarter of a mile off the East End. All 150 persons aboard survived.