458 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956 



assenting, Dr. Clarke and I made it for a few hours, with Danny 

 Thomson as boatman. While I worked the shore among the boulders, 

 Clarke scaled the heights up a steep, narrow gully or rift. He retraced 

 his steps a bit faster than he went up, riding a rock slide that he 

 started in his descent. Though neither of our collections was at all 

 extensive, we must have set up a number of records. Both of us got 

 samples of the desired phosphate "ore," Clarke at the upper end of 

 a former cableway that brought down the rock to the long-demolished 

 pier, and I from the dump at the lower end, where remained still a 

 lot of rock and debris. 



Nevis is the island on which Alexander Hamilton was born, but 

 all that remains of the reputed site of his home are bits of foundation 

 walls and a few stone steps. On this day Dr. Chace and I were pitied 

 by the entomologist and botanist, who, as usual, headed for the high 

 point ; on Nevis this is the precipitous truncated cone that dominates 

 the island, Nevis Peak, with an elevation indicated (perhaps opti- 

 mistically) on the charts as 3,596 feet. Marine biologists cannot 

 always understand the exhilaration reserved for the mountaineering 

 biologist, but on this clear and beautiful day we could indeed envy 

 our colleagues "up the hill." They circled the peak to its eastern 

 base by road, and then, with a local guide, struck up the unrelenting 

 slope, following a single ridge to the summit. The cleared land gives 

 way to forest at about 1,000 feet, and from that point the ascent was 

 a scramble over boulders, roots, and saturated tangles of vegetation. 

 Occasionally the climbers came to an open shoulder from which the 

 cultivated fields and the shore line of Nevis could be seen far below. 

 After three hours of climbing the party reached the summit ridge, 

 above an old breached crater, which they followed to a surveyor's 

 tripod on the actual summit. Several hours were spent here and on 

 a slower return trip. Here is one of the most spectacular views avail- 

 able in the Antilles, as the whole of the adjacent island of St. Kitts, 

 culminating in Mount Misery, spreads northward under piled white 

 clouds. The summit ridge of Nevis bears an excellent sample of 

 Antillean "elfin woodland," a dwarfed type of forest of which the 

 component trees are bent and gnarled by the wind. Epiphytic ferns, 

 mosses, bromeliads, and orchids abound in this cool, wet realm, and 

 collecting for the botanist was excellent. 



Inasmuch as marine collecting at Nevis was poor, we decided to 

 move over to Frigate Bay near the southern end of St. Kitts and 

 investigate what appeared on the chart to be a promising reef on 

 the windward side of that island. A walk of about half a mile across 

 the narrow neck of St. Kitts, past a pond where natives in festive 

 mood were sacking blocks of salt that had crystallized on the surface, 

 brought us to one of the most interesting reefs encountered on the 



