with it. When I was there some English engineers were survey¬ 
ing the valley of the Yuna with a view to running a line of rail¬ 
road to St. Iago. But in some places along the river they found 
that their piling would have to go more than ioo feet deep. 
Our next port was Frederichstadt in the island of Santa Cruz, 
one of the Virgin group. It is under Danish rule and was just 
then recovering from the effects of a negro insurrection, in the 
course of which the principal sugar estates were burned over, 
and nearly all their stock of old Santa Cruz rum was lost. In 
place of rebuilding the old sugar mills, there is now a central 
steam mill near Christianstadt, which is connected by a four inch 
iron pipe with the juice vats on all the principal estates, so that 
all that the planter does is to crush his cane, running the juice 
into these large vats where it is mixed with a sufficient quantity 
of lime to prevent fermentation. The boilers for running the 
crushing mill are fired from the megasse, or crushed cane. The 
great trouble in this system of making sugar is in freeing the juice 
from the lime. 
To break the monotony of life in these islands they have an oc¬ 
casional hurricane or tidal wave. In 1S67 or 8 one of our men- 
of-war was lying quietly in the harbor when within a few minutes 
she was thrown several times around at her anchors then landed 
high and dry up in one of the streets of the town parallel to the 
water front and some distance back from it, having passed over, 
or around some low houses. It was only a tidal wave. 
Leaving Santa Cruz we ran along to the eastward to Guade¬ 
loupe, which is one of the chain of beautiful islands known as 
the “ Leeward” and “Windward” or “Caribbee” Islands, which 
separate the Caribbean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean on the east. 
Geologically these islands are, I believe, entirely separate from 
the rest of the West Indies. They are nearly all of volcanic ori¬ 
gin, with shores descending abruptly into the Caribbean Sea, 
while into the Atlantic the descent is much more gradual, so that 
on this side we find a second distinct group of islands built up 
mainly of corals and shells. 
Guadeloupe belongs to France and really comprises two islands, 
Grande Terre belonging to this organic group, and Basse Terre 
which is volcanic. This latter island we visited ; it is very high, 
