C H A P T E R X X X V I
THE GRENADINES AND GRENADA
TH E s ix ty miles between St. Vincent and Grenada
is strewn with islets, which continue the
great curve of the Caribbees, bearing a little west of
south. T h e y are called the Grenadines, and statements
of their number range from three hundred to
six hundred, but most of them are mere rocks and
bits of earth. On the surface they have the appearance
of fragments of some greater island, shattered
to pieces and scattered over the waters; but in reality
they are the peaks and pinnacles of a submerged
mountain ridge, with deep water around and among
them— a section of the broken and partly sunken
bridge which in ages far remote connected the continents
on their eastern side and inclosed the double
basin of a sea whose outlet was over the present
Cordilleras to the Pacific, as modern scientific men
believe.
Some of these islands are fertile and cultivated,
and all together have perhaps a dozen square miles
of area and 3000 inhabitants. Bequia, a short distance
from St. Vincent, is six miles long, and con-
348
THE GRENADINES AND GRENADA 349
tains some 8000 acres, and Cariacou, or Cariabacu,
near the southern end of the range, is the next
largest. Many of them have names, some of Carib
origin, like the two already mentioned, some derived
from families that have owned or occupied them, as
Balliceaux and Battowia, but more from some physical
characteristic or aspect, as Round, Castle, Sail,
Bird, Mosquito, and so on. The present dwellers are
mostly negroes, and though some cultivate patches
of sugar-cane, cotton, indigo, or fruit trees, where
once were considerable plantations, for the most part
they raise “ provisions,” and cattle and sheep, build
boats, and go a-fishing. Sometimes they catch
whales among the rocks and reefs and extract their
oil. Often an island is owned by a single person,
or by a family which is engaged in raising cattle and
poultry, and, from the centre all round to the sea,
is “ lord of the fowl and the bru te.” And they are
said to be much attached to their broken bits of
country, these people of the Grenadines. The land
is volcanic and in places fertile; but, with water
everywhere around, there is sometimes a lack of
that which is good to drink, for there are no running
streams and few wells that escape a decided saline
flavour. On Cariacou there is a sloping hill 1000
feet high, and elsewhere there are varied heights
and terraces of the jagged character which on other
islands appears high in air instead of along the water-
level. Symptoms of volcanic action in the depths
are sometimes exhibited even yet.
Having passed these straggling Cyclades, we come
to Grenada, last and most beautiful of the Caribbean