is a crater 1000 feet deep, which in the wet season
forms a dismal lake fringed with palm trees; and
there are fissures through which sulphurous gases
still issue.
T he population of St. Christopher is something
less than 30,000, and has not been increasing of late
except among the blacks. There is but a small
white element, descendants and representatives of
the old landowners, and Portuguese traders from
the Azores. Sugar was the one great staple, and it
has not been replaced by anything greatly profitable,
for lack of enterprise. T h e negroes are not fond of
working on the estates, and cannot get possession
of small allotments of land to cultivate for themselves,
and the industrial condition is not satisfactory.
Much fruit is grown, and it pervades the
town of Basse-Terre, which contains the life of the
island, with a mingling of shades of colour in complexion
and dress as picturesque as that of the houses
and gardens.
Nevis, as the English have always called it, thinking
perhaps of Ben Nevis, though Columbus reverently
named it Nieves for “ Our L ad y of Snows ” in
Spain, is hardly more than a pendant to St. K i t t ’s
geographically, as it is politically. T h e passage
between, called “ T he Narrows,” is barely two
miles across. Nevis is about seven miles long by
six wide, and is mostly occupied by a volcanic cone
3460 feet high, flanked on either side by a lower
summit. T he fertile land, which used to be covered
with rich plantations, is a mere margin around this
mountain mass, and is no longer a flourishing girdle