VOLUME I

Travel Lovers' Library

_Each in two volumes profusely illustrated_

Florence By GRANT ALLEN

Romance and Teutonic Switzerland By W. D. MCCRACKAN

Old World Memories By EDWARD LOWE TEMPLE

Paris By GRANT ALLEN

Feudal and Modern Japan By ARTHUR MAY KNAPP

The Unchanging East By ROBERT BARR

Venice By GRANT ALLEN

Gardens of the Caribbees By IDA M. H. STARR

Belgium: Its Cities By GRANT ALLEN

L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY Publishers 200 Summer Street, Boston, Mass.

GARDENS OF THE CARIBBEES

Sketches of a Cruise to the West Indies and the Spanish Main

By Ida M. H. Starr

IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I. _ILLUSTRATED_

Boston L. C. Page & Company _MDCCCCIV_

_Copyright, 1903_ By L. C. PAGE & COMPANY (INCORPORATED)

_All rights reserved_

Published July, 1903

Colonial Press Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co Boston Mass., U. S. A.

To My Beloved Children

TO THE READER

These sketches were written during a memorable cruise to the West Indies and the Spanish Main in the winter and spring of 1901. There has been no attempt to write a West Indian guide-book, but rather to give preference to the human side of the picture through glimpses of the people and their ways of life and thought. With this idea it was thought best to give attention only to such of the ports visited as were full of human interest and typical of the life about the Caribbean Sea.

There was a strong feeling that we were sailing in romantic waters, and there has been no desire to eliminate the element of fancy from these pages.

It may be of interest to remember that at no time since--and perhaps never before--could this voyage have been made under the same conditions. Since then man and the greater powers of Nature seem to have conspired to make much of this delightful region forbidding to strangers. Several ports have become dangerous because of fever and plague; proclamations in French and _pronunciamientos_ in Spanish have adorned West Indian street corners; Haïti has reverted to its almost chronic state of riot and revolution; the Dominican republic has again chosen a President whose nomination came from a conquering army; Venezuela has been full of alarms and intrigues; while already the Germans are beginning to show their hand in the Caribbean; Martinique and St. Vincent have been desolated by volcanoes then thought to be practically extinct; and of delicious St. Pierre there remains but a sadly sweet memory.

I. M. H. S.

_10 June, 1903._

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE VOYAGE 11

II. PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAÏTI 35

III. SANTO DOMINGO 83

IV. SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO 124

V. CHARLOTTE AMALIE, ST. THOMAS 162

VI. MARTINIQUE 197

VII. MARTINIQUE, "LE PAYS DES REVENANTS" 246

VIII. ISLAND OF TRINIDAD. PORT OF SPAIN 275

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS