156 WEST INDIA SOCIETY. 



once here; the negroes rejoicing in sundry fastnesses, whereunto 

 they may repair and set the cow-skin at naught. What cotton is 

 grown on their wild sterile tracks they export quietly without leave 

 or license being asked at any custom house in the world — to St. 

 Thomas'. This is the chief occupation of their men of colour; the 

 aforesaid white or yellow folk being much too indolent, and still 

 more devoid of tact, for seafaring. But whatever be their defects, 

 they abound in that truly island virtue, hospitality. We dined 

 with their Publius in an apartment which served the joint purposes 

 of hall and store; casks, whether of American flour or jerked beef, 

 pitch, pine boards, bags of nails, &c., being stowed to within arm's 

 length of the table. It is ungracious to cavil at any entertainment, 

 much more where guests are received with the single-heartedness 

 that welcomed us in Virgin Gorda: and, on leaving, another mark 

 of attention drew our notice ; they had armed our boat, unknown 

 to us, with munition for the stomach during our voyage home. 



Virgin Gorda, or Penniston, which common parlance has corrup- 

 ted into Spanish town, is well nigh the easternmost of a group, 

 including about forty islets. They lie in lat 18. 30. N., the longi- 

 tudinal meridian of 65. W. passing through their centre. From 

 Anigada, or the drowned island ; a name it has gained from being 

 almost level with the water's edge ; to Sainte Croix, the extremes of 

 this belt, are nearly twenty five leagues. 



These islands were discovered by Columbus, in 1493, and named 

 by him Las Virgines, after the Romish legend of St. Ursula and her 

 eleven thousand sisterhood. This seems a correct version of the 

 subject, although antiquaries have been at variance respecting it; 

 Mr. Chief Justice Suckling, in his account, asserting that they were 

 first so named in 1586, by Drake, in compliment to our "good 

 Queen Bess." Ten years later this archipelago was visited by the 

 Earl of Cumberland, then bound to attack Porto Rico : — a narra- 

 tive of the voyage, preserved in Master Richard Hackluyt's black 

 letter collection, mentions it as " a knot of little islands, wholly 

 uninhabited, sandy, barren, and craggy." And in what the old 

 gowns-man terms an excellent rattier for the West Indies, are 

 given the following " Markes to know the island called La Virgin 

 Gorda. 



La Virgin Gorda is an high island and round, and seeing it you 

 shall espie all the rest of the Virgines, which lye east and west one 

 from another and are bare without any trees. You may goe about 

 by them until you see the little grey island, which you shall see by 

 itself by the Virgines ; and coming near to the said island, over that 



