lO ST. THOMAS. 



West Indies, was reached on March i6th. As the ship steamed 



in towards the harbour, Frigate birds soared high overhead 



with their long tail feathers stretched widely out. A number 



of brown pelicans {Felicanus fuscus) were flying at a moderate 



\ height near the shore, and every now and then dashing down 



io^yf^ -2**^ ^yijh closed wings into the water on their prey like gannets, 



\^ "vJsS^i^i^^ their close allies. Often several of the birds dashed down 



pAw &V I together at the same instant. 



'^^•A The island of St. Thomas itself, as well as its outliers, is 



'**^^ covered with a wild bush growth, which at first sight might 



perhaps be taken for original vegetation, but which is composed 

 of plants which have overrun deserted sugar plantations. It 

 is only in a few remote parts of the island that any original 

 forest exists, and in small streaks of broken ground bordering 

 the watercourses. The whole of the country in the island of 

 St. Thomas and in all the immediately adjoining islands was 

 cropped with sugar-cane until the emancipation of the slaves 

 in 1848. Since that time the ground has been allowed to run 

 wild. There was only one estate partly under cultivation at 

 the time of the ship's visit, and the owner of it, Mr. ^Vyman, 

 told me that he made no sugar, but found sufficient sale for 

 his canes in the raw state to be cut up and sold for chewing. 

 Mr. Wyman was nearly ruined by the emancipation, and said 

 that the planters received only 50 dollars per head compensa- 

 tion for the loss of their slaves, and that after the lapse of 

 three years' time. 



All about the shores in every small bay were to be seen 

 wrecks of vessels of all kinds, and in various stages of dilapida- 

 tion, which had been wrecked by the hurricanes, for which 

 St. Thomas is notorious, and close to our anchorage was a 

 portion of a large iron dock which had been sunk before ever 

 it could be used. Behind the town of St. Thomas are hills 

 rising to a height of 1,400 feet at their highest point. 



I landed at one of the many wooden jetties amongst 

 numerous negroes of both sexes lolling about and chewing 

 sugar-cane, their constant occupation. The shore is covered 

 with corals bleached white by the sun, and amongst these lay 

 quantities of calcareous seaweeds {Halimeda opuntia and H. 

 t?-idens), branching masses composed of leaf-shaped joints of 

 hard calcareous matter articulated together. These were all 

 quite dry and bleached white, and hard and stiff, like corals. 

 Seaweeds belonging to two very different groups of algae thus 

 secrete a calcareous skeleton, Halimeda and its allies belonging 

 to the Siphonaceai, green algce, and Lithothamnion and allied 

 genera belonging to the Corallinace^, which are red-coloured 

 algse. These lime-secreting algx' are of great importance from 



