Note 35 — Chapter XLII
Reading edition
In Barbados, the negroes make a little difference in their mode of washing. Going down to the sea-side, they make use of the sea-water, and then spreading them upon the sand, sprinkle them occasionally with the briny fluid. When (during a short visit to that island) I saw them thus employed, it recalled forcibly to my mind the description of the Princess “Nausicaa” in “Pope’s Homer’s Odyssey,” who at the command of Pallas went to wash the robes of state in the “mazy waters.”
“Then emulous the royal robes they lave, And plunge the vestures in the cleansing wave; (The vestures cleansed o’erspread the shelly sand, Their snowy lustre whitens all the strand.)”