May 1, 1912.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



369 



Glimpses of Rubber Lands. 



By the Editor of "The India Rttbbcr World." 



St. Thomas and Its One Famous Product: Bluebeard's Castle. — St. Croix — 

 Sugar, Cocoanuts and Piety; An Ancient Pirate. — Antigua — Beautiful St. John; 

 Flourishing Manihots. — St. Lucia — Castilloas, the Fer-de-Lance. — Dominica — 

 Healthful. Fertile — Heveas. Sapium. Funturaias — Low-Priced Land. Cheap 

 Labor. — Martinique — Mont Pelee; St. Pierre — Guadeloupe — Healthful and 

 Fertile — La Soufriere — Favorable Conditions for Rubber. — Off to Trinidad. 



A\"ERV pleasant way to visit the real tropics is to go by 

 the way of the Danish, British and French West Indian 

 Islands to Barbados, then on to whatever portion cf the 

 Torrid Americas one has in mind. The following brief para- 

 graphs are submitted as a brief guide to 

 those who may have some of these islands 

 in mind as possibly suitable for rubber 

 growing : 



ST. THOMAS. 



One reason that I stopped at St. Thomas 

 was that it is a port of call on the way 

 to the islands that do something, if not a 

 great deal, in rubber growing. Another, a 

 perhaps more potent one, was that I had 

 received a package of seeds no one was 

 able to identify, but which when macerated 

 contained a percentage of rubber, and they 

 had been posted from St. Thomas. 



The water journey had been rough, and 

 when we slipped into the beautifully pro- 

 tected harbor of Charlotte Amalie and 

 dropped anchor in water as calm as a mill 

 pond, the contrast was as pleasing as it 

 was striking. It was just at nightfall and 

 with no breeze, not a ripple on the water, 

 hardly any noise on sea or shore, ordinary 

 conversation on our boat seemed gro- 

 tesquely loud and one was tempted to 

 whisper. The little town evidently goes to 

 sleep soon after sunset, but it wakes up 

 early in the morning, and it was then that 

 we went ashore. We had an excellent 

 breakfast at the clean little hotel, and then started out to get 

 light on the rubber- containing !-eeds. It" did not take long to dis- 

 cover that wher- 

 ever they came 

 from, they 

 did not come 

 from that island. 

 The knowledge 

 of its produc- 

 tions is very 

 complete, large- 

 ly because they 

 are so few. In- 

 deed, the only 

 product of any 

 note is the cheap 

 and world-fa- 

 mous bay rum, 

 and neither the 

 bay nor the rum 

 is a St. Thomas 

 product. 



Of course we 

 visited Blue- 

 beard's Castle, 

 a half ruined stone tower, set up on the hillside overlooking 

 the bay, a relic of the days of the buccaneers. The hardy 



Bluebe-^rd's Castle, St. Tho.m--\s. 



H--\RBOR OF St. Tho.m.^s (Towx of Ch-\rlotte Amalie in Foreground). 



old pirate, who was the possessor of seventeen wives, so 

 our dusky guide informed us, was finally captured, put in a 

 barrel lined with bristling knives arid rolled down the steep hill 

 into the sea. He was so much cut up by this treatment that he 

 never returned. Our ten-year-old informant with rolling eyes 

 and dramatic gesture, also described a tunnel running from the 

 castle far out under the harbor, its ancient purpose being the 

 blowing up of unsuspecting merchantmen anchored in the bay. 

 We attempted to bribe the boy to show us 

 the tunnel, but his horrified stories of 

 "ghostses' groans an' clankin' chain" fright- 

 ened us oH. Besides no one knew where 

 the mouth of the tunnel was. These dime 

 novel delights were so wearing that we 

 forebore to visit Blackbeard's Castle on the 

 other side of the town, but went timidly to 

 the boat landing and hurried for refuge to 

 the steamer. 



There is another interesting feature in 

 St. Thomas, that is, to Americans, which 

 is the fact that Denmark almost unloaded 

 the island upon the United States, and its 

 colored and partly colored population of 

 13.000 came very near being American 

 citizens. These St. Thomasites, all of 

 whom speak English, and not Danish, 

 deeply resent the slight put upon them by 

 Uncle Sam, and are very apt to accuse 

 every visiting American of being party to 

 it. During my brief visit I apologized to 

 several score indignant citizens and prom- 

 ised at the first opportunity to use my in- 

 fluence to have the decision reversed. 

 ST. CROIX. 

 Another nearby Danish possession is 

 Santa Cruz, ordinarily called Saint Croi-x, 

 an island ihat is as fertile as St. Thomas is barren. Sugar and 

 cocoanuts are the chief products here, a by-product being the well- 

 known Santa 

 Cruz rum. We 

 landed at Fred- 

 ericksted and 

 spent some time 

 in doing the 

 neat little town, 

 chatting with 

 all the natives 

 and incidentally 

 attending church, 

 for the "Do- 

 mine," an Epis- 

 copal clergyman 

 on our boat, had 

 been invited to 

 assist at the 

 service. There 

 is no hotel in 

 the town, but 

 there are four 

 churches, and 

 the whole popu- 

 lace attends. The audiences are very black and very devout 

 The streets of Fredericksted are very clean, the town thrifty, 



