chap, iv,] WEST INDIES. 151 
The present number of white inhabitants is com¬ 
puted at 4,000, and taxes are levied on 26,000 ne¬ 
groes; and there are about three hundred blacks 
and mulattoes of free condition. 
As in the other British islands in the neighbour¬ 
hood, all the white men from the age of sixteen to 
sixty are obliged to enlist in the militia, and in this 
island they serve without pay. They form two re¬ 
giments of foot, although the whole number of ef¬ 
fective men in each regiment seldom exceeds three 
hundred; but there is likewise a company of free 
blacks, and this, before the late war, constituted 
the whole of the military force within the island; 
the British government refusing to send them troops 
of any kind. 
Of the wisdom of such conduct in Great Britain, 
the reader will be able properly to judge, when he 
is told, that the natural strength of this island, from 
the conformation and inequalities of its surface, is 
such, that a garrison of two thousand effective 
troops, properly supplied with ammunition and 
provisions, would in all human probability have 
rendered it impregnable to the formidable invasion 
of 1782 . 
With St. Christopher’s surrendered also the island 
of Nevis; from which it is divided only by a small 
channel, and of which I shall now give some ac¬ 
count. 
