INTRODUCTION. XV 
From Santa Cruz we steam across the Saba Bank, dredg- 
ing occasionally as the sea permits, and pass under the lee of 
Saba, an old volcanic cone, which rises 1,500 feet sheer out of 
the water. Steps lead up from the water’s edge, for a height 
of 800 feet, to the bottom of an ancient crater, where a large 
settlement exists. At Saba the greater part of the former rim 
of the erater has disappeared, while at St. Eustatius the cone 
is broken only at one point. 
We next come to St. Kitts, perhaps one of the most striking 
of the West India Islands, in its exhibition of their typical struc- 
ture, — a single peak, rising to about 3,700 feet, but with gentle 
slopes (Fig. C.), formed by old lava streams washed down by 
Fig. C. — Western Slope of St. Kitts. 
torrential tropical floods during the rainy season, and deeply 
furrowed by diminutive сайопѕ. The whole. outline of the 
island is composed. of graceful slopes, which become less steep 
as they approach the sea, and covered nearly to the highest 
point with flourishing sugar plantations, the steeper grades to- 
wards the top of the crater becoming more and more barren as 
they near the summit. 
Such are in general the features of nearly all the Windward 
Islands; the scenery varies as we pass from islands with one 
summit to others with two or more peaks, and with slopes more 
or less chiselled by the rains. Such islands as Saba, Montserrat, 
St. Kitts, or St. Vincent, with a single central peak, present a 
marked contrast to larger islands, like Guadeloupe, Martinique, 
and Dominica, or to islands like the Grenadines, forming dis- 
connected ridges rising from deep water, and differ still more 
