18 



of forty thousand individuals of pure race, un- 

 mixed with any other race of natives. I dwell 

 the more on these observations ; because, previ- 

 ously to my travels, the Caribbees were men- 

 tioned in many geographical works as an ex- 

 tinct race *. Unacquainted with the interior 

 of the Spanish colonies of the continent, these 

 writers supposed, that the small islands of Do- 

 minica, Guadaloupe, and Saint Vincent, had 

 been the principal abodes of this nation, of 

 which all that remains throughout the whole of 

 the eastern West India islands are skeletons^ 

 that are petrified, or rather enveloped in a lime- 

 stone containing madrepores. According to 

 this supposition the Caribbees must have disap- 

 peared in America, as the Guanches in the ar- 

 chipelago of the Canaries. 



Tribes, which belong to the same people, re- 

 cognise a common origin, and call themselves by 

 the same name. That of one horde is generally 



* Polit. Essay, vol. i, p. 83. 

 f These skeletons were discovered in 1805 by Mr. Cor- 

 tez, whose interesting geological observations I have already 

 bad occasion to mention (vol. iv, p. 41, 42). They are en- 

 chased in a formation of madrepore breccia, which the Ne- 

 groes call with great simplicity the masonry of God almighty ; 

 and which, as recent as the travertin of Italy, envelopes frag- 

 ments of vases and other works of man. Mr. Dauxion La- 

 vaysse, and Dr. Koenig, first made known in Europe this phe- 

 nomenon, which has so much excited the attention of geolo- 

 gists. (Phil. Tr. 1814, plate 3 ; Cuvier, Ossem. foss., vol 1, 

 p. Ixvi,) 



