its pendants, Desirade, Marie Galante, and Les
Saintes, Martinique, and, as dependencies of Guadeloupe,
St. Bartholomew and part of St. Martin, in
the northern Caribbees. Holland retains Curasao,
Aruba, and Buen Aire, off the coast of Venezuela,
with Saba, St. Eustatius, and part of St. Martin in
the northern Caribbees as dependencies of the same
colony. Denmark first got possession of St. Thomas
as a trading station, and acquired Santa Cruz and St.
John by purchase, and has held them through all the
wars and contests without even the necessity of defending
them. T h e United States for the first time,
as the result of the Cuban war, put its foot on the
junction of the Greater and Lesser Antilles, the
centre of the great bow that guards the Caribbean
Sea and the approaches of the American isthmus,
and Puerto Rico became her territory.
C H A P T E R X
WEST INDIAN SLAVERY
TH E Spaniards who first took possession in the
West Indies were in quest of earthly treasures.
T he conversion of the poor benighted heathen was
subordinate to that even in the mind of the pious
Columbus and of his great patrons Ferdinand and
Isabella, who invested so liberally in his risky enterprise.
But while the Spaniards could endure hardship
and privation in this quest, they did not like to
toil for the treasures. When their effort to extract
them by the labour of the natives failed, through
the natives’ preference for death if they could not
have liberty, they began the importation of African
slaves to work the mines of Hispaniola.
A t that time, Portugal claimed possession of the
African coast and was the first to engage in the slave
trade. T he victims were already slaves in Northern
Africa, and were bought from Moorish and other
native masters, but it was not long before kidnapping
began to be resorted to down on the western coast.
Some of the slaves had been sold in Portugal and in
Spain, but the demand from the West Indies gave
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