GUADELOUPE. 473 



worn by the Caribs in the seventeenth century. The same rock has yielded other 

 objects, such as recent potsherds, the dried grains of coccoloba uvifera, and the 

 skeleton of a dog. Hence the bodies embedded in the Guadeloupe conglomerate 

 are not true fossils, nor of any great antiquity. They may have been living since 

 the discovery of America, or even since the occupation of Guadeloupe. 



Guadeloupe is continued eastwards by the islet of Desirade (Deseada), that is, 

 " Desired," so named by Columbus because on the voyage from Europe to Guade- 

 loupe it was the first land sighted by the weary mariners. It is of the same 

 geological formation as Grande-Terre, but more rugged, and culminating in a 

 peak 900 feet high. 



Marie-Galante, named from one of Columbus' vessels, is much larger but some- 

 what less elevated than Desirade. It looks as if built up of successive step 

 terraces, like an old Babylonian tower, dominated on the east by a plateau 675 

 feet high. Round the island a cay in process of formation forms a still submerged 

 terrace, probably destined one day to be upheaved like all the others. The circular 

 beach is about 50 miles round. 



The archipelago is completed by the Saintes, properly Los Santos, so named 

 because discovered soon after the feast of xill Hallows ("All Saints "). They are 

 the fragmentary remains of two volcanoes which were disposed in the same direc- 

 tion as those of Guadeloupe and Dominica. Of the seven separate rocks some are 

 fractured craters, others lava heaps resting on a submarine volcano, the highest 

 point being Le Chameau (1,040 feet), in Terre-de-Haut on the east side of the group. 



The Saintes are at once the health resort and the bulwarks of Guadeloupe, 

 their summits being crowned with forts. 



Discovered and named by the Spaniards, Guadeloupe was regarded as a 

 Spanish possession, but remained unoccupied till 1635, w^hen the French adventurers 

 L'Olive and Duplessis landed at Allègre Point with some white labourers under 

 contract for three years. After a sanguinary struggle with the Carib natives 

 these pioneers gave way for others, and four chartered companies were successively 

 ruined in their attempts to plant the island, although all the Caribs, numbering 

 several thousand, had been removed to Dominica and St. Vincent. 



Guadeloupe also suffered from the attacks of the English, and several times 

 changed hands. The English M-ere in possession in 1794 when Victor Hugues, 

 arriving with 1,150 men, proclaimed the emancipation of the slaves on the con- 

 dition of their expelling the enemy. Thus freed both politically and socially, 

 Guadeloupe became an impregnable stronghold, bristling with forts, building 

 flotillas to capture the English shipping, to liberate the blacks on the surrounding 

 islands, and even recover some of these from the English. 



But slavery w^as restored in 1802, and the refractory black troops massacred. 

 Rather than relapse into the former state of servitude, hundreds committed 

 suicide ; Del grès and nearly 400 followers blew themselves up in a redoubt ; 

 altogether about 10,000 were killed or transported, besides thousands sent to the 

 wars in Italy. Hence the blacks assumed a passive attitude when the English 

 returned and captured the island in 1810, and again during the Hundred Days. 



