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RADIO BROADCAST
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THE "SEA scamp'" which carried the idea of listening in to the Bahamas
faith in everything you could tell 'em. We thought they might shy at a tale of what radio telephony could do, but all our stories were accepted at par. Had they not heard the words of living men and music come out of the black box wound up with the crank; had they not seen in the Sunday School building, men and women walking as shadows on the white wall? If this white stranger from the great world says he can pick out from the sky music, words, and the sound of the fiddle or the banjo, we know he can do it, and we ask him to put up the strings which connect with the sky and we will all keep quite still and hsten.
All that the white man said came true, as they knew it would.
Of all our friends at Dunmore Town ('on Harbour Island), none knew of the radio telephone. The mysterious machine which made dots and dashes, that but one man in the place understood, had no appliance for hearing the news and music in the ether by wireless telephone. The promise of bringing to earth opera singers from New York and Pittsburgh was much appreciated, as a child shows its pleasure for what it does not understand, but accepts as from the fairies. I am sure that all
the natives would answer to Barrie's " Do you. believe in fairies?" a positive yes. Governor's Harbour, where they also have a more or less mute radio, is one of the other of the two or three places in all these islands that have even the beginnings of radio contact with the outer world. After leaving these centres of population, you find only little settlements of from 100 to as few as 10 inhabitants. At Watling Island, 300 miles south of Nassau, the first land Columbus touched, a Commissioner and a handful of natives make up the entire population — not even a school was here. But Watling Island light is important for the ships trading to Cuba and the West Indies, and here two lonely men live out a monotonous existence in a blistering sun the year round. Signing the visitors' book, we found that the last visitor had arrived involuntarily about two years before and his ship had been lost.
Another lighthouse not so far away has communication with the outer world only once every two months. One longed to give to each of these self-effacing but necessary workers the receiver ofl^ the boat and provide for them a touch with all mankind during their lonely vigils, four hours off, four hours on, never a full night's sleep.
At Bimini, the radio will soon take the place of the old Bahama "Welcome Tree."
COMING ABOARD TO HEAR THE RADIO The Sea Scamp being visited by the police force of Harbour Island, the Bahamas