INTRODUCTION. xvii 
separated by an inlet from the hamlet where the Empress Jose- 
phine was born. 
Nowhere else among the West India Islands are the slopes 
so deeply furrowed as on the flanks of Dominica, a long com- 
paratively low ridge, without prominent peaks, but with many 
signs of active voleanie action. The island is as yet but little 
cultivated, and on all sides one meets indications of its former 
French dependency. But here, as in many of the islands 
which have passed into English hands, and have been left 
to shift for themselves, the results have not been satisfactory. 
While at anchor in Petite Baie d'Arlet, we could not but be 
pained at the wholesale destruction of humming-birds going 
on. Ten thousand skins are annually exported from that single 
settlement. 
In St. Lucia, the most fertile of the West India Islands, there 
is à handful of English settled at Castries, a deserted town, 
Fig. D. — Pitons, St. Lucia. 
neglected, like the island itself, and nearly abandoned. The 
island is thiekly wooded in parts; at the south end on the 
lee side are two remarkable peaks, the Pitons, rising 2,700 
feet perpendicularly out of the sea. (Fig. D.) Between them 
