484 



MEXICO, CENTRAL AMEEICA, WEST INDIES. 



France to the Danish Government for the sum of 750,000 livres (£30,000). But 

 meantime the unfortunate Caribs, reduced to slavery and treated with like cruelty 

 by all, bad completely disappeared. 



Santa Cruz, whose planters grew rich during the flourishing times of slavery, 

 was one of the best-cultivated islands in the Antilles. It was entirely covered 

 by plantations \vp to the very summits of the hills, and from a distança the reddish 

 soil of the tilled land could be seen alternating with the verdant crops. Santa 

 Cruz is both better watered and more pleasantly diversified with hill and dale 

 than the Virgin group. The craggy heights have nowhere prevented its cultiva- 

 tion, and nearly the whole of the south side is a fertile plain, with a gentle incline 

 on a substratum of calcareous formation. The heights which skirt the north- 

 west coast attain their culminating point in Mount Eagle, about 1,300 feet high. 



Fig. 210.- -Santa Ckuz. 

 Scale 1 : 600,000. 



64"50 



West oF Gre/snwich 



64' 30 



Depths. 



^ 



The capital, called the Basin, or, in official language, Christianstœd, lies at 

 the head of an inlet on the north side, which has been to a great extent choked 

 with mud. It is connected with all the surrounding villages and plantations by 

 good roads lined with palm-trees. Most of the Santa Cruz negroes belong to the 

 religious sect of the Moravian Brothers, who have for generations ministered to 

 them, and who were themselves at one time slave-owners. Their apostolic zeal 

 had strangely degenerated since the days of the first missionaries, Leonard Dober 

 and Tobias Leupoldt, who had sold themselves into bondage in order to evangelise 

 their fellow- slaves. 



The emancipation of the blacks was proclaimed in 1848 ; but the freedmen 

 complain that the promised lands have not been assigned to them. More than once 

 partial insurrections have broken out, but have always been sternly repressed. 



