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Show A TOPSYTURVYDOM PEOPLE Saba, mentioned in a recent dispatch from the i West Indies, is one of the most extraordinary places in the world. By courtesy it is called an island, but it is really nothing more than the summit of an extinct volcano vol-cano sticking up out of the sea. Inside the crater, live the only inhabitants of Saba. They live there because there is nowhere else for them to live, the outside slopes being nearly near-ly as steerj as the sides of a house. The place belongs to Holland, and the people are all Dutch. Nevertheless, they speak English as their native tongue. They call their crater town Bottom, because it is situated on the top of a mountain. moun-tain. Although surrounded on all sides by the sea, they often spend weeks without seeing it. for that involves a long climb up to the rim of the crater. Still less frequently do they touch salt water, because be-cause to do so tbey must, in addition, climb downward down-ward for a distance of 1,500 feet by a. precipitous rock-hewn path, known as the Ladder. It is, however, in regard to their staple industry that these Dutch people who speak English, and who live aloft iu a -volcano city . called . Bottom, reach the extreme of topsy-turvydom. One might imagine them making balloons or kites, or, in fact, anything which they do make, which is ships. Not ocean-going liners, of course, but good, serviceable ser-viceable schooners and luggers, whose repute is great all over the Windward islands. The ships, when finished, have to be hauled up to the rim of the crater, and then lowered over a precipice into the sea. Exchange. . |