Galante possesses an area of sixty-five square miles
and a population of nearly 14,000. T h e little cluster
of “ Saintes,” with its six square miles of surface,
has 1900 people, consisting partly of the occupants
of a military and naval station.
Between Guadeloupe and the other important
French island of Martinique, which lies a little east
of south, nearly one hundred and fifty miles away,
is Dominica, the largest of the British possessions in
the Lesser Antilles, if again we omit Trinidad.
With all those to the north of it belonging to Great
Britain, it is a member of the Leeward colony. It
has an area of two hundred and fifty square miles
and a population of 30,000. The area of Martinique
is four hundred square miles and its population over
177,000, making it the most populous and important
of the French West Indies, though not so large as
Guadeloupe.
The remaining islands of the Lesser Antilles belong
to Great Britain, and except Barbados and
Trinidad, which have colonial governments of their
own, constitute the colony of the “ Windward
Islands. Nearest to Martinique and directly south
of it is St. Lucia, with an area of two hundred and
forty-five square miles and a population of 45,000,
and farther south and slightly westward from the
direct line is St. Vincent, with one hundred and
twenty-two square miles of surface and 48,000 people.
Barbados lies by itself, one hundred miles to
the east, and is surrounded by deep water. It is, in
fact, an oceanic island, having no direct submarine
connection with the chain of the Caribbees or with
THE ARCHIPELAGO OF COLUMBUS I I
the southern continent except the deep bed of the
Atlantic. Its area is one hundred and sixty-six
square miles, and it has over 180,000 inhabitants.
Grenada, a little to the west of south from St. V in cent
and eighty miles away, with the long cluster
of the Grenadines strung in the interval, properly
terminates the Caribbean chain. Grenada and the
Grenadines together have an area of one hundred
and twenty square miles and 50,000 inhabitants.
There is a stretch of deep water nearly a hundred
miles wide between Grenada and Trinidad, of which
Tobago is an outlying spur, coming to the surface
like a gigantic spear-head off its north-eastern angle.
A s has already been said, these two islands have
their submarine attachment with the terra firma of
South America, close to which the larger one lies,
but in the geographies they are part of the British
West Indies. Tobago, which is politically attached
to the Windward colony, has an area of one hundred
and fourteen square miles and a population of 18,-
400. Trinidad is a colony by itself, and in size
comes next to Puerto Rico. Its area is 1754 square
miles, and its population something over 200,000.
We are compelled to take notice of the Dutch
West Indies which lie off the coast of Venezuela,
though they pertain to the South American system
as completely as the other members of the old Spanish
Leeward group, which now belong to Venezuela
because nobody had succeeded in wresting them
from Spain before her South American colonies
gained their independence. She had, however, lost
these three islands to the Dutch, and they are now