CHAPTER XXVII 



THE LESSEE ANTILLES 



Natural beauty of the islands. Distribution among many governments. 



Differentiation into four types. 



IET us now examine the chain of islands which sweeps 

 J in a gentle curve from the eastern end of Porto Rico 

 around the Caribbean to the northern coast of South Amer- 

 icathe most beautiful and ideal of the tropical lands, 

 many of them veritable fairy islands, where the magic hand 

 of nature has produced the most esthetic and beautiful 

 products of her handiwork, even if ruthless man has done 

 much to despoil them. 



The beauties of the Great Antilles and the charms of all 

 tropical lands about which poets have written fade before 

 these. Their histories have been as broken and disturbed 

 as their topography, and no less turbid than the wind- 

 driven waves of the Atlantic which beat against their wind- 

 ward shores, and as cruel as the hurricanes, earthquakes, 

 and volcanic outbursts which from time to time have de- 

 stroyed the works of man. Pirates and buoaneers have 

 preyed upon their civilization, and great nations fighting 

 for these gems of the sea have successively seized them so 

 often that each has had a history more complicated than 

 that which marks our national existence. Here, too, the 

 institution of African slavery was introduced, to grow until 

 the Caucasian races were gradually crowded out, while each 

 island of importance has successively become great in 



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