THE CARIBBEE ISLANDS 321 



the island is hardly visible, and many shipwrecks occur. 

 In former years these accidents were the chief support of 

 thf population, who made their living by wrecking. The 

 absence of a lighthouse makes navigation dangerous. 

 Barbuda is composed entirely of granular shell-debris, ele- 

 vated by geological action. The surface is covered by a 



dense thicket of chaparral, with a few g l-sized trees 



growing upon the thin limestone soil. Notwithstanding 

 assertions to the contrary, the land is unlit for general 

 agriculture. As there are no running streams, the inhabi- 

 tants arc dependent upon cisterns, while the wild animals 

 live upon such rain-water as is caught in the cracks and 

 crevices of the rocks. Nearly all the European domestic 

 animals introduced in former centuries have run wild; 

 goats, horses, cattle, and cats have returned to their prime- 

 val state, while hundreds of English fallow-deer are found. 

 The African guinea-fowl is here in great abundance, and 

 is as shy and timid as the American quail. Wild dogs 

 also abound. 



Politically Barbuda is a parish of Antigua, being admin- 

 istered by a resident justice of the peace, whose business 

 it is to look after poachers. His staff consists of a school- 

 teacher and a midwife. For three hundred years it was 

 a hunting-preserve of the ( loddrington family of Barbados, 

 whose name so frequently appears in the annals of the 

 British West Indies, and it has never been opened to set- 

 tlement. Nevertheless, the island has been squatted upon 

 by a hardy race of negroes, who have developed into a 

 peculiar class, noted throughout the Wfst Indies for their 

 splendid physical development and ability as sailors. They 

 are restricted by the company owning the island to the use 

 of a few acres of land ; and although they are not per- 

 mitted by law to gather a stick of wood, to kill the wild 

 animals, or t<> fish inshore, they manage to poach a good 

 living. They live in a village which is perhaps more thor- 

 oughly African than any other in the New World. The 

 huts are of the mosl primitive African type, composed of 



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