468 IMEXICO, CENTEAL AiMEEICA, WEST INDIES. 



islands between Puerto Rico and Guadeloupe. Saba is an igneous cone 2,800 

 feet high, with a village nestling in an old breached crater 500 feet above the sea. 

 A sandy cove on the south side gives access to small craft, and the rock is con- 

 tinued south-westwards by a submarine bank 1,200 square miles in extent, and 

 from 5 to 20 fathoms deep. 



St. Eustatius is larger but less elevated than Saba, its culminating peak, 

 formerly a separate island, being somewhat less than 2,000 feet high. The 

 Punchbowl, as the central crater is called, is now overgrown by a dense vege- 

 tation. Orangetotvn, the capital, lies on an open roadstead on the west side. 



St. Eustatius and Saba are administrative dependencies of the Dutch island of 

 Curaçao, on the Venezuelan coast. 



St. Christopher and I^evis. 



St. Christopher, familiarly known as St. Kitts, was discovered in 1493 by 

 Christopher Columbus, who, even after visiting Deseada, Dominica, Guadeloupe 

 and Antigua, was so taken with its beauty that he gave it his own Christian 

 name. It is the only member of the Antilles that directly recalls the memory of the 

 great navigator. The Caribs called it Liamniga, the " Fertile ; " but this fertility 

 proved their ruin. Warner and his English associates, who landed in 1623, and 

 the French adventurers under d'Esnambuc, who arrived two years later, combined 

 against the natives, whom they first drove to the interior, and then completely 

 exterminated. Nothing now recalls their presence except a " rock inscription " 

 which has not been deciphered. 



Both for the English and French St. Kitts is the " mother colony," or 

 '' mère des Antilles ; " here were founded their first settlements, and from this 

 point the southern islands were gradually peopled. At first the two nations 

 divided the island between them in a somesvhat eccentric fashion, the English 

 occupying the central hilly district, the French the two extremities, the 

 " Capesterre " and the " Basseterre," while the salt-pans, though in French 

 territory, were to be common to both ; as a set-off against this the French were 

 allowed to draw their supply of sulphur from the volcano in the English district. 

 The respective domains were limited by cactus hedges, more effective barriers 

 than palisades or ramparts. 



After repelling a Spanish attack in 1629 the settlers lived peaceably together 

 till their Governments began to contend for the dominion of all the Lesser 

 Antilles. St. Kitts was taken and retaken, and finally ceded to Great Britain by 

 the treaty of Versailles in 1783. In the French district the local names recall the 

 language of its former inhabitants. 



St. Kitts differs in form from most of the other Antilles. The northern and 

 mvich larger section assumes the usual elongated oval shape ; but it is continued 

 southwards by a long tongue of sand in the direction of Nevis, and terminates in 

 a round peninsula enclosing a saline lagoon. On the map the contour lines thus 

 present the form of a guitar. But the northern section, where are concentrated 



