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Are the Antilles and the regions of the Gulf of Mexico destined to become the refuge and almost the empire of Africans torn from their own continent? It is possible, but not certain. In any case, this geographical repartition of the races would be wrought peaceably; the effort to effect it by violent measures would justly arouse the conscience of the human race.
In this part of its course the deep and swift stream from the Gulf of Mexico, afterward to be named the Gulf Stream, receives the contribution of slower moving and shallower currents which skirted the Antilles on their eastern verge.
If the reader fancies that I exaggerate, let him go and see. Let him lie for one hour off the Rosseau at Dominica. Let him sail down the leeward side of Guadaloupe, down the leeward side of what island he will, and judge for himself how poor, and yet how tawdry, my words are, compared with the luscious yet magnificent colouring of the Antilles.
Conditions In and Around Havana Fortifications and Water Supply of the Capital City Other Sections of the Pearl of the Antilles Porto Rico, Our New Possession, Described Size and Population Natural Resources and Products Climatic Conditions Towns and Cities Railroads and Other Improvements Future Possibilities.
Sailing westward along this south shore, the "Queen of the Antilles" looks desolate and forbidding, as compared to other portions of the West Indies; a panorama, of wild heights and sterile shores, and surge-beaten cliffs covered with screaming sea birds.
Tortoises occur in such numbers that their shell forms an article of commerce. Crustaceans and testaceans are abundant in number though few in species. A tiny oyster is found, not much larger than a thumb-nail, but very succulent. The marine fauna is the same as that of the neighboring Antilles, the sea and rivers teeming with edible fish, to which, however, but little attention is paid.
A first attempt, of less importance, was directed against our fleets collected at the island of Aix, near Rochefort. Admiral Willaumez, in charge of an expedition to the Antilles, had to rally the squadrons of Lorient and Rochefort, and being unavoidably delayed at the latter place, it was there that Admiral Gambier came to attack our vessels.
The mineral and organic substances which it holds in suspension heightens its transparency. In certain parts of the ocean at the Antilles, under seventy-five fathoms of water, can be seen with surprising clearness a bed of sand. The penetrating power of the solar rays does not seem to cease for a depth of one hundred and fifty fathoms.
It is not too much to say that the behaviour of the liberated slaves throughout the British Antilles, as well as the deportment of the manumitted four million slaves of the Southern United States later on, bore glorious testimony to the humanizing effects which the religion of charity, clutched at and grasped in fragments, and understood with childlike incompleteness, had produced within those suffering bosoms.
It is contiguous to all the English and French Windward Islands, only a few hours distant from the former Danish islands Saint Thomas, Saint John, and Santa Cruz, and a few days' sail from the coast of Venezuela. Puerto Rico is the fourth in size of the greater Antilles. Its first appearance to the eye of the stranger is striking and picturesque.
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