248 THE ATLANTIC. [cHapP. Iv. 
We spent a few very pleasant days at St. Thomas, some of the 
civilians of our party enjoying greatly their first experience of 
life and scenery,within the tropics. M. Gardé, the Danish goy- 
ernor, received us with the most friendly hospitality. He is 
a naval man, and was greatly interested in our investigations ; 
and his aid-de-camp, Baron Eggers, had collected and worked 
out the plants of the island with care, and was otherwise well 
acquainted with its natural history. St. Thomas, like most of 
the West Indian islands, has suffered greatly, since the emanci- 
pation, from the difficulty of procuring free labor; and most of 
the sugar estates, formerly in high cultivation and a source of 
large revenue, are now waste and covered with a second jungle. 
The comparative prosperity of this island seems to be entirely 
due to the excellence of the harbor, which marks it out as the 
principal packet and coaling station for that part of the West 
Indies. 
The natural history of the island of St. Thomas is tolerably 
well known, and large collections of its fauna and flora have 
been sent home from time to time by many competent natu- 
ralists to the museum at Copenhagen. On the present occasion 
our time was much too limited to attempt to make collections, 
so the naturalists contented themselves with a little shallow-wa- 
ter dredging, and such a general survey of the island and its 
shores as might familiarize them with the more characteris- 
tic forms of animal and vegetable life; for while the Atlantic 
islands, Madeira and the Canaries, although gradually assuming 
a more tropical character, maintain the most intimate relations 
in natural products with the South of Europe, in tropical Amer- 
ica every thing is changed, and it takes a little time to become 
familiar with new acquaintances, whom one has hitherto known, 
if he have known them at all, only from figures or descriptions, 
or, at best, mummied or pickled, or otherwise in inadequate ef- 
figy. Ophiurideans are particularly plentiful at St. Thomas, 
and we made large collections of these, particularly of the many 
