but its position and its comparatively unbroken surface
expose it to the fury of the hurricane. The
most destructive recorded was in 1780, when 4326
persons lost their lives and the damage to property
amounted to about £ \ ,2 50,000 sterling. There was
one of great violence in 1831, when the loss of life
was less and the injury to property greater. That
which has already been mentioned as devastating
St. Lucia and St. Vincent on September 11, 1898,
struck Barbados on the evening of Saturday the
10th, and raged through the night with dreadful
fury. Her Majesty’s ship Alert got out of the harbour
of Bridgetown, but a number of merchant
vessels were driven upon the reefs and wrecked.
Buildings in the c ity were seriously damaged, many
persons lost their lives, and 10,000 habitations of
labourers on the island were blown away. Great
injury was done to crops, but no such wide-spread
destitution and suffering were produced as in St.
Vincent.
C H A P T E R X X X V I I I
T O B A G O A N D T R I N I D A D
fH E narrow island of Tobago lies twenty miles to
the north-east of Trinidad, which is the nearest
land, fully a hundred miles to the south-east of
Grenada at the terminus of the Caribbees, and one
hundred and twenty miles south-south-west of Barbados.
It is surrounded by deep water, growing
shallower in the direction of Trinidad, and it is an
outpost of the South American land system of which
that island is a detached fragment. The mountain
range that runs through its length from south-west
to north-east is like a deflected continuation of that
which crosses northern Trinidad from the Venezuela
coast. The length of the island is twenty-six miles,
and its greatest width seven and a half, and it has
an area of about one hundred and twenty square
miles. Its mountains consist of volcanic cones and
ridges, and are covered with dense forests. The
culminating peak rises 2130 feet above the sea-level.
Alon g the higher steeps the pimento grows and the
parrakeets feed upon the aromatic berries which
furnish the allspice of commerce. Between the
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