AN ISLAND OF PRETTY WOMEN.

Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4871, 20 August 1884, Page 3

AN ISLAND OF PRETTY WOMEN.

• The (Jhannel Islands, and particularly > Jersey, posaegses much of interest for the Btranger, but the crowning glory of Jersey is the beauty of her women. For general comeliness ttiey would be awarded a prize in any competition of feminine grace. Rare creamy complexions that would put . the bloom on the peach to. blush, figures made graceful and sinewy by bodily toil, with ralther strongly cut features, eyes - like sloes, and lustrous dark hair, the girls met on the streets of St. Helier seem, to the siranger, the personification of "womanly independence, beauty, and maidenly reserve. The white soft mists that wrap the island from sundown to innrise give them carnation cheeks. The toil that brings with it the active, healthy body is due to pauses which will enlist on the side of those women the sympathies of true manhood. * It is because of the woeful dearth of men in Jersey that the women do'all the work. Where you meet one man in these tortuous streets of St. Helier you meet ten women. Out ,»mong the g*reen farms this disproportion of the sexes is even more painfully apparent. The heavy, ungainly carts on the country roads are without exception driven by women —and handsome women, too. Groups of cherrycheeked girls may be s>een in the wayside orchards," some picking apples fromthe irees, others', straining at tbe rude cider presses. The little fields with their luxuriant growth of turnips,' cabbages, " and ruta-baget, are all tended by women, - while the blooming flowers in the houseyards rshow in their rich variety the evidence of woman's care and attention. No one but women are to be seen in the ' big public market of St., Helier—women buying and women .selling, what men you see.are too young or too dd and decrepit —boyß'who have 'not started out in life, or old 1 sea captains who have come home to end their days, smelling of salt cod, . ajnd full.,of reminisciences of stormy voyage* to Buenos Ayres, to Australia, or through the CbinaSeas.