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are said to have been compelled to walk the plank by the pious Frenchmen, who only a few weeks before had massacred the last of the Caribs remaining under

arms.

The French soon abandoned the island, and the Dutch came back. In 1672 they were again driven out by a force from Barbados under Sir Tobias Bridges. The Dutch returned in great force, but in 1677 they were defeated and driven out by the French fleet, under Count D'Estrées.

The French now decided to abandon an island which had caused so much bloodshed and the wasting of treasure, and Louis XIV very magnanimously handed the place back to the Courlanders.

The Baltic Duke, however, was not to be inveigled into any more West Indian adventures, and, in 1682, he transferred his title to the place to a company of London merchants. In their hands, apparently, the island did not prove the bonanza it was thought to be, and when, about 1690, the island, by an agreement between the five great powers concerned, was declared neutral, "to be visited only by fleets for wood and water," the merchant adventurers of London apparently made no protest.

About 1750 the French took possession, and founded a colony. This the English disturbed in 1762, and, by the treaty of 1763, the island, after many vicissitudes, only a few of which are outlined here, passed again into the possession of the English. From that day down to the present Tobago has been constantly inhabited by Europeans, but the wars did not end. The island was again invaded by the French in 1781, but the English colonists more than held their

own, and the French invaders had to betake themselves to the woods. For ten years the tenure of the English was undisturbed, but in 1802 the island again passed into the hands of the French, and, as a local historian has it," the island cast its vote for Napoleon Bonaparte when he was elected First Consul."

There is another local legend which is of particular interest to Americans. According to it, in 1793 John Paul Jones visited the island, and stayed there many months. He is supposed to have cherished a scheme to take possession of the island, and to carve out for himself a Carib kingdom. It is certain that John Paul was not here in 1793, and the rest of the story lacks the corroboration of undisputed documents.

There can be no doubt that Tobago is the island Defoe had in mind when he wrote his immortal work, and the painstaking researches of Mr. Ober in “Crusoe's Island" show with what wonderful accuracy the great romancer outlined the scene of his greatest work. He may have profited by the adventures of Alexander Selkirk on the Pacific island of Juan Fernandez, but Crusoe and his man Friday, who was a Carib, only lived and suffered and played their manly rôles upon the shores of Tobago. The ocean currents flow past the island to-day just as Crusoe found them. Just as Defoe took them down from a loquacious but exceedingly accurate mariner over a quart of sack. The cave is there, and the goats, and if you show a desire to see them, and a sixpence, the natives will show you the footprints on the sand and the grisly remains of the Carib war-feasts.

For four hundred years Tobago has been "boomed" by colonizers. More land companies.

have been formed to exploit this little Eden than any corner of the globe. In 1683 famous John Poynts, who was, perhaps, not a wholly disinterested observer, wrote as follows concerning the famous and fertile island of Tobago:

"And I am persuaded that there is no island in America that can afford us more ample subject to contemplate the bounty and the goodness of our great Creator in than this Tobago; and this I speak not by hearsay or as one who has always lived at home, but as one that has had experience of the world and been in the greatest part of the Caribbee islands, and in almost all His Majestie's foreign plantations, and having viewed them all, have chosen this island of Tobago to take up my quietus est in."

What this ancient mariner wrote was true then, and is true to-day. In a similar strain, but in more modern words, the British Imperial Department of Agriculture calls to the attention of prospective settlers the undoubted advantages of this island, which is healthy, enjoys a pleasant climate, and is well outside the hurricane zone. Still, settlers do not come in great numbers, and many, very many, go away, not to return. The negroes, who form nine-tenths of the population, about twenty thousand souls, believe that, as far as the white men are concerned, the island is haunted, that the ghosts of the treasure-hunters who died in the disgraceful wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries return to haunt the present occupants of their blood-soaked plantations. Be this as it may, it is a fact that the settlers soon go away to Trinidad and elsewhere. Perhaps a sufficing explanation is that the present generation cannot stand the trial of solitude, as did the stalwart Crusoe.

CHAPTER XIV

THE FRENCH ISLANDS

ALL that remains of the French West Indian Empire of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that Rodney and his fleet overthrew are the magnificent islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, and the little islets that belong to the same group-Deseada, so called because it swam into view on Columbus's second voyage when the sailors were hungry and thirsty for the sight of land, and Marie Galante, not so called after any of its very charming inhabitants, but in memory of a Spanish man-of-war that here went ashore. I had almost forgotten the Saints, following in this the example of the French administration, which lets the people of the Saints go their own gait, which is said to be that of the Gulf of Guinea.

In all, the French islands* have a superficial area of about six hundred and fifty square miles, and a population of about one hundred and seventy-five thousand, almost exclusively black. These islands are at present passing through a severe economic crisis and a political revolution, which, it is thought by many, neither their commerce nor their civilisation, for that matter, is likely to survive. With their natural markets closed by the heavy import duties which we impose, the French islanders persist in raising sugar,

*Statistics dealing with the commercial, financial, and political situation in these islands are given in Appendix I, page 457.

which their rivals can produce more cheaply, both in the West Indies and in Europe. In consequence, the trade of the islands has fallen off nearly one-half since 1878.

Guadeloupe really consists of two islands, about equal in size, united by a narrow isthmus, which is traversed by a marine channel called the Salt River, about three hundred feet wide, and accessible to vessels of light draught. The eastern island, where stands Pointe-à-Pitre, the capital, at the southern entrance of the channel, bears the name of Grande Terre (high land), although in reality it is smaller and lower than Basse Terre (low land), as the western island is called. Basse Terre is entirely volcanic, and its lofty wooded ridges culminate in the famous volcano of La Soufrière.

Guadeloupe has a history full of cruel episodes and ferocious figures. When the island fell to the English in 1794, the slaves were manumitted, and since then, if not before, the colour question has been the keynote of the island's life. When, in 1802, the island, together with Martinique, was restored to France in exchange for Saint Lucia, an attempt to return the so recently freed men to slavery led to dire results. Hundreds of former slaves committed suicide, and four hundred blew themselves up in a fortress rather than return to their task-masters. It is a little-known fact of the island's history, but nevertheless true, that at this time thousands of the islanders who rebelled against a return to their former state were transported to Europe, drafted into French regiments, and for the most part perished in the Napoleonic wars. The local historians have it, I believe on good author

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