the Quebec line of steamers that ply in these seas are good and some are not so good as they ought to be. The little Dutch boats that ply through the islands on their circuitous voyage from New York to Amsterdam via Surinam are neat and charming, and though slow and deliberate in their movements, I can heartily recommend them. The enterprise of the Hamburg-American line is responsible for an innovation that should be encouraged. Thanks to it the contrast between what must have been the life on the ancient caravels and what is the comfort on the ocean greyhounds to-day is not greater than the experiences of my first and my last visit to Hayti, though only five years intervened. The enterprising Germans now run a little steamer, smart as a yacht, neat, clean, and comfortable, once every month from Kingston to St. Thomas, stopping on the way at all the interesting ports of Hayti, Santo Domingo, and Porto Rico. These steamers and, of course, the Royal Mail of England for the long stretches, one or two legs of the cruise, furnish very agreeable surprises to the traveller aweary of his recent experiences.

One disappointment at least awaits the traveller in the West Indies; probably the one thing he thinks he knows about the region in which he is travelling is only partly true. The nuts may come from Brazil, but the Gulf Stream does not come from the Gulf of Mexico. Hydrographers now say that the stream which traverses our Mediterranean is practically identical with that great equatorial current which flows from the West Coast of Africa across the Atlantic, penetrates through the Lesser Antilles into the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, whence it returns through Florida Strait to the Atlantic and begins to play its great rôle in the Western

Ocean and the adjacent lands. Now it is known that only a small fraction of this enormous current comes from our Gulf. Still, though relatively small, the American contribution to this oceanic river is considerable. It is said to form a liquid mass about 55 miles wide and 450 fathoms deep, moving at a rate varying from two to six miles an hour, or if these figures are correct it is equivalent to 300,000 rivers as copious as that of the Mississippi.

As weather conditions and reports of hurricanes that have been lost or are found form the only news that reaches the outside world from the islands of the American Mediterranean it would seem fitting that something should be said on this subject. It would be thought that such a vast body of tepid waters, whose warming influence is felt as far north and east as Nova Zembla, would raise the temperature in this section of the torrid zone so high as to render the islands uninhabitable. There are, however, the counteracting influences of the atmospheric currents, and of altitude, by which most fortunately the action of the Gulf Stream is neutralised and all the surrounding lands of the isthmian region and the islands are made suitable for the settlement of white men. I have suffered slightly from the heat in Kingston, Jamaica, and in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, but nowhere else within the confines of the American Mediterranean.

Terrific hurricanes such as the one by which Porto Rico was devastated in October, 1899, are unfortunately not infrequent. Their season is from July to November; sometimes, though not often, they occur out of season. It is held by scientists, though the mariners who sail these seas generally dissent, that these cyclonic disturbances are of local origin and appear to be con

nected with the cold northern and eastern trade-winds which rush in to fill the vacuum caused by the rarefaction of the atmosphere during the summer months. The centre of a hurricane at sea is a very unpleasant place to be. Practically few ships have survived to tell the tale. Fortunately the ocean is large and the real storm centre occupies a comparatively small area. However, weather reports by cable and by wireless through these regions have been so perfected during the last decade that the dangers of navigation have been minimised, though not wholly eliminated.

Weather conditions are notoriously a matter of personal opinion or whim, but I have always thought that an earthquake was a too substantial fact to admit of doubt or discussion among its survivors; however, the inhabitants of Kingston, Jamaica, have convinced me of my error. After years of litigation they have also, which is more important for them, convinced the highest courts in England that their city was not destroyed by an earthquake and a hurricane in 1903. The weight of evidence which they have produced has convinced the learned judges that if these terrestrial and aërial commotions did occur it was only after the town of Kingston had been destroyed by fire, and the fire insurance companies will have to pay something like two million dollars damages. It was a wonderful achievement of the Kingstonians. They proved for once that Nature in her phenomena puts the cart before the horse.

The struggle for the sugar lands ended practically with the great fight off the rock-bound coast of Dominica where in 1782 Rodney sank the fleet of De Grasse, composed in part at least of the very frigates which had sailed up the York River the year before and made our

victory at Yorktown possible. Napoleon tried, but in vain, to win back the profitable plantations. Then as now the people of Dominica and of St. Kitts and a number of the other islands spoke French, but the ancient flag was never restored to them.

Defeated in his turn by the oaken frigates of old England, Napoleon, most resourceful of men, thought of a way in which he might ruin a country he could not conquer. Somewhere in his private papers the watchful historian who seeks the little causes of great effects has found the entry:

"This day the emperor granted two thousand livres from his private purse to investigate the possibility of making sugar from the beet root. Thus France may escape the heavy tribute she is yearly forced to pay to foreigners,"

was the imperial comment.

The successful result of his experiments ruined the West Indies, and gradually in the course of three generations the most profitable of islands became the Cinderellas of the nations.

To-day, again, the tables are turning. The cost of manufacturing sugar from cane has been so reduced that the growers of the sugar-beet will have to look to their profits. With the market of 80,000,000 people once open to them on this side of the Atlantic, the growing of cane sugar in the West Indies may well become again a lucrative pursuit, though, of course, not nearly so profitable as it was a century ago.

When the lean years came and deficits began to present themselves with great regularity in every annual budget that came from the West Indian islands, the

matter-of-fact overlords in Europe also began to take stock of a business where the balance was invariably on the wrong side of the ledger. It is quite difficult to prove this statement, but there is much reason to believe that our English cousins, the most businesslike of overlords, some twenty years ago made what might, had it been received with enthusiasm, have developed into a formal offer to sell their out-at-the elbow West Indian islands to Uncle Sam for a reasonable sum, and to-day some think there is a standing offer on file in Washington whereby John Bull pledges himself to take our Philippine troubles off our hands if we in turn would only oblige by shouldering his West Indian burden.

Perhaps the fruit trade between the islands and the mother countries across the Atlantic in refrigerated steamers, which is just beginning, will save the economic situation and perhaps it will not. Perhaps the English threat of reducing the scale and the class of government given that the cost of administration may be reduced to the level of the revenue collected-will, in some hardup day when the old-age pensions have to be paid, be carried into effect, and then perforce West Indian civilisation will take a backward step by which our interests cannot but be affected.

One hundred and fifty years ago all the powers of the world were competing for the possession of the islands, which many of them to-day would gladly abandon if the way to doing so were clear. And those powers which to-day, like Germany, cannot successfully deny the impeachment of coveting West Indian real estate, it is equally clear, only regard them as strategic positions or stepping-stones to more desirable places and