CARIBBEAN EXPEDITION, 195 6 — SCHMITT 455 



The reef we spotted on the way in was centered about Rat Island. 

 It was indeed rich collecting, reminiscent of Carriacou. Roundabout 

 were mud flats, sand flats, weedy patches rather than turtle-grass 

 shoals, Forties clumps again, and, on the little island itself, much 

 honeycombed and fissured sandy limestone alive with shrimps, crabs, 

 and barnacles, boring, stalked, and sessile, and all manner of other 

 invertebrates. On the other hand, the electric light over the ship's 

 side within the harbor that evening lured virtually nothing to our dip 

 net, probably because the waters here are too polluted. 



Recalling that a longtime friend and correspondent of the National 

 Museum lived in Pointe a P.itre, we undertook to look him up — Adrian 

 Questal, now in his 80's and confined to his third-floor elevatorless 

 apartment. He is very proud of the several papers he published on 

 the island's flora, helped with identifications made for him in Wash- 

 ington. While looking for the Questal residence, we encountered a 

 Mr. Halley who was anxious to have a strange crab identified. He 

 said it had been taken in a fish pot or trap, locally. This we could 

 not believe, for what he had was a beautifully mounted and varnished 

 Birgus latro, the coconut "robber crab" known to us only from the 

 mid and south Pacific. We were most skeptical of his claim that this 

 crab came from the offshore waters of this Atlantic island, yet as we 

 were preparing to leave Pointe a Pitre, we spied in the curio shop 

 just within the customs house gates three identically mounted speci- 

 mens in a case with a lot of West Indian shells, sea fans, and corals. 

 Could it be that the robber crab has become an "acclimatized" inhabi- 

 tant of the coconut groves of Guadeloupe ? I shall always regret that 

 a tight schedule did not permit us to check his information. We are 

 still inclined seriously to doubt it. However, the rufus-tailed guan, 

 a pheasant which was introduced into the islands of Bequia and Union 

 in the 1800's, has become well established there ; and monkeys said to 

 have been brought over in the slave-trading days are at home in the 

 forests of Grenada, according to Fredric Fenger (1926). 



The night's run northward in the lee of Guadeloupe was uneventful. 

 Our tries on the 40-fathom bank off Antigua for red snappers were 

 futile ; all we got was one black crevalle. It was midafternoon before 

 we tied up at English Harbour and were received by Cmdr. and Mrs. 

 V. D. B. Nicholson, Desmond's father and mother, from whom we had 

 chartered the Freelance. Here, roundabout, were what was left of 

 the buildings of Nelson's day, many of which were still in good repair 

 when used in part as the shore laboratory of the Barbados-Antigua 

 expedition of the University of Iowa in 1918. It was from English 

 Harbour that Nelson sailed with his 12 ships to victory at Trafalgar 

 over the French fleet which greatly outnumbered his small fleet. 



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