ST. LUCIA AND ST. VINCENT 347
less than 3000 are of unmixed European blood.
Some Asiatic coolies were introduced and a few
Portuguese labourers from the Azores, but the large
profits of sugar were gone, and many plantations
have been broken up into small allotments. T he
blacks are gradually becoming landholders, and
arrowroot is now the chief export.
Kingstown on the leeward coast, at the extreme
south-west, is the one available port, and there is, or
was before the last hurricane, a straggling town of
6000 people, or less, on the shore. T he bay was
beautiful to look upon, with a verdant amphitheatre
back of it, and red-roofed houses rising on the lower
slopes amid palm trees and gardens. In the middle,
at the highest point, was a substantial government
house surrounded by a botanical garden. There
were three parallel avenues conforming to the curve
of the shore, and intersecting streets ran up the
slopes and out to the suburban gardens and plantations.
It is the trading centre and the one town of
importance in the island, and it contains the churches
and chapels of five Protestant denominations and an
increasing number of schools. Aw a y from K in g s town
the population is almost wholly rural, occupying
scattered villages, which consist of negroes’ huts
clustering about a few more substantial structures,
or living in cabins appurtenant to the old plantation
buildings. Industry and trade have relapsed to a
primitive state and respond but feebly to the pulsations
of the world’s commerce, which touch the
island only at the port of Kingstown.