ST. LUCIA. 479 



is really grown in Guadeloupe. More than half of the foreign trade is carried on 

 with France and her colonies. 



Like Guadeloupe, the island is represented in the French Chambers by a 

 senator and two deputies, and in the general council by 36 members, nearly all 

 elected by a very small number of voters. There are two administrative 

 arrondissements, Fort-de- France and Saint-Pierre, and income and expenditure 

 average about £160,000. 



St. Lucia. 



Like Dominica and Grenada, St. Lucia, the " Sainte-Alousie " of the planters 

 of the last century, is one of those West Indian islands which have become English 

 possessions while remaining French in their traditions, language, and usages. It 

 is one of the loveliest, if not the loveliest, in the long chain of these volcanic 

 islands. When the traveller approaches it from the north and contemplates the 

 two prominent peaks, 2,690 and 2,720 feet high, and then passes between the 

 huge rocky walls of these majestic portals into the marvellous amphitheatre of 

 wooded hills encircling Port Castries, he is tempted to exclaim that surely St. 

 Lucia is unrivalled for natural beauty. La Soufrière, one of its volcanoes, 4,000 

 feet high, is still active, and in the chasms of its crater, lined with deposits of 

 sulphui-, the eruptive matter is constantly in a state of fusion. Copious thermal 

 waters bubble up in various parts of the island, and one of the sulphurous streams 

 still flows through a half-ruined establishment erected by the French before the 

 Revolution. 



After a long resistance to the early settlers, the Carib natives were at last 

 exterminated, and the island fell successively into the hands of the French and 

 English. But since the rupture of the treaty of ximiens it has remained in the 

 possession of Great Britain. On the advice of Podney it was not restored to 

 France in exchange for Martinique. In that admiral's opinion the excellent 

 strategic position of Port Castries, with its rocky bulwarks, was of paramount 

 importance for the consolidation of British supremacy in the West Indian waters. 



Nevertheless, this haven, " the best in the Antilles," long continued to be of 

 slight commercial or military value. Recently, however, it has been lined with 

 wharves, and made a central coaling-station for steamers plying in the West 

 Indian waters. Since then the foreign trade has rapidly increased, the exchanges 

 being estimated at a total value of about £310,000. The exports alone advanced 

 from £117,000 in 1887 to £162,000 in 1889. But the local traffic is slight, four- 

 fifths of the surface being still covered with primeval forests. 



Nevertheless, agriculture is being steadily developed, and the sugar, raised on 

 small allotments, is said by the growers to be equal in quality to that of St. Kitts. 

 The population has increased by immigration, and still more by the return of a 

 large number of blacks till recently employed on the Panama Canal works. The 

 whites, scarcely 1,000 altogether, are in the proportion of about one to forty of the 

 people of colour. Despite the bad reputation caused by the frequent outbursts of 

 epidemics in former years St. Lucia is really one of the healthiest of the Lesser 

 Antilles. Mount Fortuné (770 feet), where the troops are stationed, and the 



