hazardous an undertaking. A n English settlement
was made on St. Lucia as early as 1639, but it had
a hard struggle to keep alive until the period of contention
between the French and English for the
possession of this whole group of islands. St. V in cent,
like Dominica, was left in possession of the
aborigines by agreement, until, in the eighteenth
century, both French and English settlers crowded
in, and the island became subject to the long contention
of France and Great Britain in their wars.
Grenada and the Grenadines were first settled by the
French, who with their negro slaves undertook to
massacre or drive out the natives. T hey succeeded
in holding the principal island.
Barbados was somewhat out of range of the rivalry
for possession between the English and French. In
fact, it was not among the Spanish discoveries. A n
English vessel, named the Olive Blossom, made a
landing there in 1605 while on the way to Surinam,
and took possession for the British crown. Colonists
were brought out in 1625, and the English have
been in practically undisturbed possession ever
since. Tobago, which lies off Trinidad, and is
virtually appurtenant to it, was scarcely occupied
by the Spanish, though nominally in their possession.
The British flag was raised over it in 1580,
when the first schemes of colonisation in South
America were on foot, but the Dutch and French
successively took possession afterwards. No permanent
settlement was made there for a long time
by any nationality, and in the final composition of
the quarrels it was kept by Great Britain. A s al,-
ready stated, Trinidad, being really an appendage
of the South American continent, was settled by
Spaniards at an early period, but their little colony
was confined to the shore of the Gulf of Paria, and
the aborigines were long permitted to roam over the
rest of the island. The latter appear to have been
comparatively late comers from the mainland, and
were divided between Caribs and Arawaks, with a
preponderance of the latter.
Perhaps the most interesting case of colonising in
the West Indies during the seventeenth century is
that which deprived Spain of the magnificent island
of Jamaica, third in size and by nature one of the
richest of the Greater Antilles. Spain’s enlightened
policy in dealing with its natural resources and its
native inhabitants had by the middle of that century
almost reduced it to a howling wilderness,” peopled
by wild cattle, hogs, and dogs, and overgrown
with the luxuriance of tropical vegetation and animal
life. T he human inhabitants numbered barely
3000, half of whom were negro slaves, and all of
whom had lapsed into hopeless laziness amidst the
decay of the early settlement. In 1655, Cromwell,
in the height of his power, sent a fleet under A d mirals
Penn and Venables to attack Spain in her
island colonies, and being repulsed from Hispaniola,
they took easy possession of Jamaica. Admiral
Penn, by the way, who was no better than the other
piratical sea-dogs of his time, was the father of the
Quaker coloniser of Pennsylvania, who got vast
credit for benevolence because he shrewdly paid the
Indians a trifling fraction of its value for their land,