May i8, 1907. ] 
783 
ja most interesting spot and furnished the pro¬ 
fessor with abundance of specimens for his col¬ 
ection. 
Barbuda Island, seldom if ever visited by 
cruising yachtsmen, lying north of Antigua, was 
visited one day. It is Government property and 
kept by them as a farm and Government pre¬ 
serve. There is only one white man on the 
island with about 500 negro laborers to cultivate 
wt. Near the landing an old Martello tower, 
milt centuries ago for the defence of the island, 
is still in excellent state of preservation. Be¬ 
fore night the yacht returned to the anchorage 
it Antigua. From here she steamed to the island 
1 if Montserrat, famous for its excellent lime juice, 
And the peculiarity of the inhabitants’ names; 
i ill are negroes yet bear Irish names. Then to 
Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe, where several days 
,vere spent gathering -more interesting data and 
; 'specimens. , 
The island of Desirade, to the eastward, was 
lext visited and circled in the yacht before they 
iorc away westward for Marie-Galante Island 
or more photographs, and then on to St. 
; Rupert’s Bay, at Dominica, for a night’s an- 
| Forage. 
A drag was made next morning 1.500 feet 
ielow the surface, and on the surface was caught 
1 large quantity of squid spawn, a valuable ad¬ 
dition to the collection. 
That afternoon the yacht anchored at Roseau, 
: m the southwest end of the island, and remained 
1 here several days while the party roamed about 
. his interesting place. Some went to the lake 
i md viewed the sea to the east of the island from 
ijhe mountain top, some to the sulphur springs, 
f ind others to the large plantation near Roseau 
vhere the Government horticultural gardens are 
1 located. 
Here may be found specimens of almost every- 
I king grown in tropical countries and seed plants, 
• nd good advice is supplied free to all British 
.Vest Indies inhabitants. There happened to be 
mother touring party here at the same time and 
Monsieur “Cockroach,” the yachtsman's friend 
Jit this port, was at his wits’ ends to supply 
[ nough horses for all. 
From here Port de Prance, Martinique, was 
• isited, passing close in to see Mt. Pelee and 
1 he buried town of St. Pierre as they passed. 
1 Ibtaining permission from the Governor to land 
fi t St. Pierre a visit was paid that place next day. 
Considerable excavation was going on and sev- 
llE HORTICULTURAL GARDENS, ROSIAN DOMINICA. 
; ra ' s,r eets are already cleared of the ashes and 
t| lVa beneath which they were buried. The ex- 
[Pvation is all under Government supervision, 
rocks and stores are carted to the sea shore, 
, 1<a the ashes and earth back inland. Several 
pictures were taken, but all attempts to get a 
I ’od one of the top of Mt. Pelee were fruit- 
■ss, as it was obscured by clouds all the ti lie 
I >e yacht lay off here. 
[to be concluded.] 
Mr. Daniel Bacon has purchased Tamerlane 
1 Ia t won the Bermuda ocean race last year. 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
ANGELA III., A NEW GERMAN SONDER CLASS BOAT. 
From \\ assersport. 
British Letter. 
The yacht racing season in England will com¬ 
mence on May 22 in the River Thames; the first 
day’s racing taking place under the auspices of 
the New I hames Y. C. at Gravesend. The 
name of this institution is by no means 
analogous with the club itself, because the New 
Thames Y. C. was founded just forty years ago, 
and there is scarcely a more thoroughly old- 
fashioned club on the coast. 
In the first place Americans who have visited 
London will exclaim at the idea of the yacht 
club stationed only twenty miles from London 
Bridge. Yet here stands the New Thames, 
right opposite to Tilbury Docks, just where it 
stood forty years ago when the river flowed 
there between the verdure-clad shores of Kent 
and the shining pastures of Essex. It stood 
there many years before that, as the country 
mansion of a Kentish county family, a quiet 
dignified old house by the river. Now the 
world’s commerce converges off the club house 
at Gravesend, looking up the river may be seen 
myriads of chimneys sending columns of smoke 
into the air, and on the busy river “Toil, Wealth, 
Glitter and Grime on the flowing tide.” 
It is here that the English yacht racing season 
begins, and with but slight variation has begun 
for more than half a century. I will try in a few 
lines to give a brief sketch of a season’s yacht¬ 
ing in Great Britain and Ireland. We are very 
conservative, and as 1 have said all seasons 
are alike. Last year, 1906, a great many men 
thought it would save a long passage, and a 
deal of trouble, if we began the year in Scot¬ 
land and worked gradually south. It was tried. 
We began racing on the Clyde, on the glorious 
first of June, but we were told that the innova¬ 
tion shocked the Londoners dreadfully. One old 
gentleman who had dined at Gravesend on the 
opening day of the season for something like 
thirty-seven years was unable to sustain the 
shock, indeed the whole system of British yacht¬ 
ing tottered at its base, and so, in 1907, we are 
back again on the first day of the season at 
Gravesend to race, on May 22, over the worst 
course imaginable but to enjoy the hospitality 
of the most delightful old world club “the New 
Thames.” 
Let us pause for a moment on the Terrace, 
after dining in the old room where the Adams 
atmosphere survives, and is infinitely truer than 
if the modern art lover had been let loose to 
furnish it in the “Adams style,” and if it is a 
fine evening let us watch a crimson sunset in 
the haze over London. On a full tide, here, 
the river is but 800 yards wide and on the eve 
of the opening of the racing season all the finest 
yachts are to be seen at the buoys. It could not 
be claimed by any stretch of imagination that 
Gravesend is a suitable place to bring racing 
yachts, yet what a mighty fleet of vessels I have 
seen there. The Prince of Wales’ cutter 
Britannia, _ Lord Dunraven’s Valkyrie. Mr. A. 
D. Clarke s Satanita, Mr. Walker's Ailsa and 
the German Emperor s cutter Meteor were 
among those which were in the narrow waters 
at Gravesend a decade ago. 
I his year under the Internationtl rule, fortu¬ 
nately, the cutters will not be quite so large. 
1 he first class will be 75-footers instead of 90- 
footers, as in the old day's. Our new crack 
cutters will be Sir James Pender’s Brynhild II., 
Mr. M. B. Kennedy’s White Heather II., and 
Mr. R. W. N. Young’s Nyria. 
H he racing at Gravesend starts from the 
Lower Hope a few miles below the town, and 
the course is round the Mouse Lightship at the 
entrance to the Thames estuary and back to 
finish at Gravesend. 1 here is a very strong 
tide and the yachts generally go down with the 
ebb and come home with the afternoon flood. 
With its turns and sandbanks it is a funny 
course, and it is not much of a test of the boat 
but occasionally one gets a good weatherly trial 
with an easterly breeze. In 1905 I sailed the 
course in the Ilerreshoff 52-footer Sonya, then 
a new vessel, we were 7”u ahead of our op¬ 
ponents in the thrash to windward down to the 
M ouse Lightship, but in running home to 
Gravesend the yachts astern so brought up the 
flood tide and the wind that Sonya only won 
the match by a length. 
I here are three days’ racing of this -kind 
in the Thames estuary either at the end of May 
or beginning of June, after which the yachts 
race on a passage match from the Thames to 
Harwich. At Harwich, an old-fashioned port 
on the east coast, about 50 miles from the 
Thames, there is a two-days’ regatta, each day 
with good open sea courses. Then the racing 
fleet return to the Thames and make another 
passage race from there down to the Straits of 
Dover Upon arrival at Dover the yachts cruise 
to Dublin Bay, there being an interval of eleven 
days to allow them to make the rather long 
passage. Up to the beginning of the Irish sea¬ 
son the 75ft. cutters will have sailed seven 
races. Two matches are sailed at Dublin and 
two at Belfast. At both these ports the tide is not 
nearly so strong as on the south and east coast, 
and the same remark applies to the yacht races 
on the Clyde where there is practically no tide 
to speak of. The courses at Dublin and Belfast 
afford a very good all-round test of the yachts. 
During the Clyde fortnight either light and 
fluky winds involving a good deal of luck may 
