246 CAMPS IN THE CARIBBEES. 
a range of hills eight hundred feet in height. The 
character of soil and people of every island of the 
Grenadines may be summed up in the following para- 
graph from the “ West India Pilot”: 
“Bequia has no running streams, and Whee is no 
watering-place. There are some wells at the head 
of the bay, but the water is not very good. Wood is 
plentiful, and may be obtained by permission from the 
owners, but it is doubtful if the natives would cut it. 
Poultry may be had occasionally in small quantities, 
and sometimes fish, but vegetables never.” 
The people are apathetic. The sea yields them 
sufficient for the day; of cotton and sugar their lands 
produce sufficient to supply them with commodities 
not obtainable from the sea. The contrast between 
these silent, sleepy islands, whose people are content 
to exist and will not work, and an island like Bar- 
bados, where the negroes all must work or starve, 
and where they harass a visitor nearly to the verge 
of insanity,.is refreshing. Some of the islets, like 
Balliceaux and Battowia, are owned by single indi- 
viduals, or firms, who raise there cattle and sheep; 
all are well stocked with wild doves, plover and ducks 
in their season, and their rocky shores are surrounded 
by myriads of sea-fowl. 
In Bequia, and extending throughout the chain, 
is a blackbird —a new species named the Quzscalus 
dumtnosus — which makes the air resound with its 
joyous cry: “Bequia sweet, sweet, Bequia sweet.” 
The Caribs told me of this bird several months be- 
fore I obtained it, as-its peculiar cry had caused it to 
be marked by them. They had preserved a touching 
story of its connection with Carib captivity, when the 
