CHAPTER XXVIII 



THE VIRGIN ISLANDS AND ST. CROIX 



Their Antillean character and position. Geological character. Various 

 kinds of government. St. Thomas. St. John. Virgin Gtorda, 

 Anegada. St Croix. 



AHYDROGRAPHIC chart of the West Indies, such as 

 sailors use, shows a long, shallow bank, hardly one 

 hundred fathoms deep, extending eastward from the end 

 of Porto Rico like a crescent curving to the northward, from 

 which rise numerous small islands of the Virgin group. 

 This bank is the eastward continuation of the same shoal 

 or platform that surrounds all the Great Antilles, and the 

 islands are Antillean in their structure and origin, and are 

 the summits of the submerged eastern end of the Antillean 

 mountain chain. On the south and east this bank is 

 terminated by the Anegada Passage, which separates the 

 Virgins from the Caribbean chain by a narrow marine si rait 

 nearly three thousand fathoms deep. 



Til-' Virgin Islands were discovered by Columbus on St. 

 Ursula's day, and so named by him because they extended 

 in a long procession like that of the eleven thousand vir- 

 gins of the Christian legend. Most of the islands are 

 small, and some of them precipitous and hardly habitable. 

 Proceeding eastward from Porto Rico, the largest of them 

 are Crab Island, Cnlehra, St. Thomas, St. John, Tortola, 

 Virgin < tarda, and Anegada. Besidesthese there are more 

 than fifty smaller islands or keys Scrub Island, Beef 



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