46 
partake more of the characteristics of the Negro than 
Indian. Besides weaving baskets and fishing they raise 
patches of yams, casava, bananas and the like. A few 
fled to Trinidad when the volcano Sonfriere erupted. 
The black Caribs, it is said, originated in this way: A 
slave ship was wrecked on the Island of Bequia. Those 
who escaped, together with other runaway slaves, cap- 
tured Indian wives. Their progeny is the so-cailed ‘‘ black 
Carib.”” They increased rapidly, became troublesome 
and finally occasioned much bloodshed. In character 
they were not unlike the Jamaica Maroons, the offspring 
of runaway slaves, who have lived for many years in the 
secluded valleys of that rugged island. 
In October, 1776, the last Carib war was fought. 
Five thousand and eighty men, women and children were- 
removed to the Island of Balliceaux from St. Vincent. 
The following year they were shipped to the Spanish 
main, but owing to revolutions, having had enough of 
wars and quarrels, many drifted to the coast of British 
Honduras to seek peace and protection under their 
former masters, the British. 
In Balize they call themselves ‘‘ Karifs.” Such a name 
serves well to distinguish them from the Caribs of pure 
Indian blood. 
During the past winter the writer came much in contact 
with the Karifs on the coast of Honduras. He left the 
beautiful Island of Cozumal, famous for its healthfulness 
and its fine-flavored tobacco, and coasted for several 
days along Yucutan and Honduras. ‘he only boats 
passed were fruiters, fishermen carrying their catch alive 
in tanks to Havana, and a Norwegian bark with a load of 
mahogany. One looks longingly toward the site of 
ancient Tuloom and pictures in his mind what ruined 
cities may be hid in the forests of that unexplored wilder- 
ness. Although these waters are of much interest and 
beauty, one is menaced by constant danger, since to be 
cast on the reefs on one side means certain destruction, 
or to be washed on the sandy shore of Yucutan on the 
other is to fall into the hands of very hostile Indians. 
One draws a freer breath when he reaches the coast of 
Honduras. It was Christmas night when the writer 
arrived at Belize, the capital. 
The mahogany cutters in large numbers came in from 
the forests, and the Karifs from the neighboring coast 
villages paddled into town in their light piroques. The 
array of color in this collection of types and rabble of 
merry-making people was dazzling. The moonlit streets 
resounded with the cries of drunken woodmen. Gaily 
dressed musicians marched up and down, followed by a 
horde of merry men and women and half-dressed children. 
The players rattled the loose teeth in the jaw-bone of a 
donkey, rubbed a piece of tin over an old cassava grater, 
played home-made guitars, rattled bones and beat tam- 
tams. Many were singing a strange melody to the tune, 
half humming, half pronouncing words in an unintelligi- 
ble patois and keeping time by wiggling their bodies. 
The festivities over, the Karifs left for their homes, 
and the city resumed its usual peaceful silence. 
In British Honduras there are about 32,000 people; 
14,000 of these constitute the Spanish element (that is, 
Spanish and Indian and pure Indian); there are about the 
same number of negroes and mulattoes; 3,000 Karifs; and 
1,000 Europeans and others. The coast is mainly in- 
habited, the interior being mostly an unexplored wilder- 
ness. 
The colored population (that is, negroes and mulattoes 
excluding the Karifs) are very influential citizens in 
Belize. Many own considerable property and marry 
whites. They are called Creoles, which wounds the 
pride of the Louisiana Creoles, since they profess to be of 
pure French or Spanish extraction. 
SCLENCE: 
Vol. XXIII. No. 573. 
The Karifs live in huts made of pimento slats covered 
with mud and thatched with the leaves of the Cohune 
palm. They hunt, fish and grow cassava, yams and 
maize. They also raise cocoanuts and bananas, which 
they sell to fruiters. 
The women wear nothing but a loose, sleeveless 
chemise of white cotton, which reaches to their knees, 
and a kerchief picturesquely tied around the head. ‘The 
men wear a cotton shirt, pants and straw hat. 
Under the refining influence of English rule, with 
- schools, churches, hospitals, and especially the absence 
of American missionaries and color prejudice, they are 
rapidly improving. 
PROFESSOR LANGLEY ON THE INTERNAL 
WORK OF THE WIND: 
BY C. F. AMERY, CLINTON HALL, NEW YORK CITY. 
In the current number of the American Journal of Science 
there is a paper by Professor Langley, entitled ‘‘ The In- 
ternal Work of the Wind,” in which he gives the results 
of some very interesting observations on the extreme 
fluctuation in the horizontal speed of the wind as recorded 
on a light anemometer, at intervals, not of minutes, but 
of a few seconds only. He finds, for instance, that a 
conventional twenty-mile-an-hour wind will continually 
range from ten to thirty-miles an hour, at intervals of 
twenty seconds, occasionally rising to thirty-five miles an 
hour, or falling to a momentary lull. From these un- 
expected facts the Professor argues for such a necessary — 
turmoil in the atmosphere as appears to-him to furnish 
the factor necessary to afford an intelligible explanation 
of the otherwise avparently inexplicable problem of a 
heavy body, like a vulture, circling for hours aloft, with- 
out wing-motion or apparent effort of any kind. Further, 
the Professor regards this ‘‘internal force’ of the atmos- 
phere as a factor of so much importance in aeronautics 
that he ventures the prediction that the aerodrome of 
the future, by the mere change of the inclinations or 
aspects which it presents to the wind, will be able to 
achieve long journeys, even to circumnavigate the globe, 
with the expenditure of no more energy than is required 
for the necessary adjustment of its inclinations to the 
changes of the medium it floats in, except during calms. 
Anything published by Professor Langley as the result 
of his careful deliberation is entitled to respectful con- 
sideration, but in the present instance I venture the asser- 
tion that he is being led away by a fallacy from his true 
line of investigation of this very interesting problem. His 
point of departure is, I think, easily traceable to a sen- 
tence embodying the expression that it would be impossi- 
ble for a bird to circle in the effortless manner exhibited 
by a vulture under his notice, if the winds had been mere 
horizontal currents. This isan unsupported, and I believe 
it is a mistaken assumption ; but leaving this for the 
present, I will first deal with what I consider the mechant- 
cal heresy involved in his prediction of the capabilities 
of the aerodrome of the future. . Direct onward flight and 
circling involve some differences of mechanical principle. 
The eagle can circle upward with rigidly extended wings, 
but in essaying an onward course under the same conditions 
he must descend. 
The mechanical principle of bird-sailing, that is, of gliding 
down an incline, may be expressed as the translation of 
the force of gravity into horizontal flight, by the pressure 
of a column of air on the under surface of the bird or arti- 
ficial aeroplane presented to it at a suitable angle. The 
weight, with the first fall from a state of rest, gives the 
impulse, and the maintenance of the due angle, the direc- _ 
