"West Indian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... toppled over a barn, and—blew potatoes out of the ground! When that was done, a white cloud shaped like a dumb-bell whirled down the valley across the evening blue, roaring and twisting and twisting and roaring all alone by itself. A West Indian hurricane could not have been quicker on its feet than our little cyclone, and when the house rose a-tiptoe, like a cockerel in act to crow, and a sixty-foot elm went by the board, and that which had been a dusty road became a roaring torrent all in three ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... frequent changes and corruption of government, torn by dissensions, uncertain whether its allegiance was to Spain or to France, reflecting the spirit of upheaval and uncertainty which made Europe one huge brawl—into this cosmopolitan city swarmed ten thousand white, yellow and black West Indian islanders, some with means, most of them destitute, all of them desperate. Americans, English, Spanish, French—all cried aloud. Claiborne begged the consuls of Havana and Santiago de Cuba to stop the movement; the laws forbidding the importation of slaves were more ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... Goldsmith undoubtedly shadows forth his annoyances as traveling tutor to this concrete young gentleman, compounded of the pawnbroker, the pettifogger, and the West Indian heir, with an overlaying of the city miser. They had continual difficulties on all points of expense until they reached Marseilles, where both ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... Philadelphia, Clinton had received notice from his government that, in consequence of the alliance between France and the United States, a new plan of operations had been determined on. The French were to be attacked in their West Indian possessions by way of diversion from the main scene of action. Five thousand men were detached from his army to aid in the execution of this purpose, and 3,000 were sent to Florida. Clinton was also apprised that a French fleet would probably ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... voices of children made music in the woodland solitudes. It had been designed that the more commodious bay of the Chesapeake should be the scene of this settlement; but the naval officer who should have superintended the removal was hungering for a West Indian trading venture, and declined to act. They perforce established themselves in the old spot, therefore, where the buildings were yet standing on the northern end of the little island, which, though deserted now, is for us historic ground. The routine ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... Isabella, of Charles V. and Philip II., were extraordinary men, and accomplished extraordinary things. They stretched the limits of the known world; they conquered Mexico and Peru; they planted their colonies over the South American continent; they took possession of the great West Indian islands, and with so firm a grasp that Cuba at least will never lose the mark of the hand which seized it. They built their cities as if for eternity. They spread to the Indian Ocean, and gave their ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... naval force, acting in concert with the armies of the United States, would, in all human probability, take and destroy the whole British power in that part of the world. It would put their wealth and West Indian commerce into the power of France, and reduce them to the necessity of suing for peace. Upon their present naval superiority in those seas depend not only the dominion and rich commerce of their islands, but the supply of their fleets and ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... widow whom this handsome West Indian married was no other than Mrs. Pinckney herself; for Thomas Pinckney soon after died, and his widow married the West Indian. He did not break her heart, since she lived to marry a third husband, but he was an extravagant fellow, and wasted part of her children's inheritance. ...
— Revolutionary Heroes, And Other Historical Papers • James Parton
... stretches itself from pole to pole, and reappears in every race. We recognize it in the wishing-cap of Fortunatus, which is a Celtic legend; in the cornucopia of the Romans; in the goat Amalthea among the Greeks; in the wishing-cow and wishing-tree of the Hindoos; in the pumpkin-tree of the West Indian Ananzi stories; in the cow of the Servian legends, who spins yarn out of her ear; in the Sampo of the Finns; and in all those stories of cups, and glasses, and horns, and rings, and swords, seized by some bold spirit in the midst ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... They infested the West Indian seas and the northern coast of South America. Against these pirates and to protect American commerce, the United States sent Commodore Perry, with two ships of war, in the spring of 1819. Perry died of ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... Capes; and she sailed, as was no doubt most convenient, the Saturday following. I should find her a comfortable vessel, and he would oblige me with a letter to Captain Alsop. Did Captain Paul know him? But the captain was describing West Indian life to Mrs. Manners. Dorothy had little to say; and as for me, I was in no very ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Nature's design in my formation—where the lights and shades in my character were intended. I was pretty confident my poems would meet with some applause; but at the worst, the roar of the Atlantic would deafen the voice of censure, and the novelty of West Indian scenes make me forget neglect. I threw off six hundred copies, of which I had got subscriptions for about three hundred and fifty. My vanity was highly gratified by the reception I met with from the public; and besides I pocketed, all expenses deducted, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... not got beyond James Stevenson and Jean Keir his spouse, to whom Robert the First (?) was born in 1675. Could you get me further back? Have you any old notes of the trouble in the West Indian business which took Hugh and Alan to their deaths? How had they acquired so considerable a business at an age so early? You see how the queries pour from me; but I will ask nothing more in words. Suffice it to say that any information, however insignificant, as to our common forbears, will be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Dombey, in so far as it was possible to give him the assurance without expressing it in words, that indeed he mistook his nature, Walter had been anxious to show even more cheerfulness and activity after the West Indian interview than he had shown before: if that were possible, in one of his quick and zealous disposition. He was too young and inexperienced to think, that possibly this very quality in him was not agreeable to Mr Dombey, and that it was no stepping-stone to his good opinion to be elastic and hopeful ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... jungle. If on inquiry it were found that the suggested town stood on a navigable river, the privateers would proceed to some island, such as St Andreas, where they could cut down cedar-trees to make them boats. St Andreas, like many West Indian islands, was of a stony, sandy soil, very favourable to the growth of cedar-trees. Having arrived at such an island, the men went ashore to cut timber. They were generally good lumbermen, for many buccaneers would go to cut logwood in Campeachy when trade was slack. As soon as a ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... his orchids and at the red West Indian flowers, and he thought of those crawling green jungles from which they should have ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... principle of slavery, however mitigated by the recognition of personal liberty and the suppression of corporal punishment. It was found expedient, however, in deference to a very strong remonstrance from West Indian proprietors, to convert the proposed loan of L15,000,000 into an absolute payment of L20,000,000, and this noble donation, for conscience' sake, was actually ratified by parliament and the country. The bill founded on the resolutions met with no serious opposition, but an amendment by ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... of the young woman below, could be endangered by a single careless word, or act. The whole affair seemed more a nightmare than a reality. I was actually serving as first officer on a pirate ship in search of vessels to rob on the high seas, commanding a crew of West Indian cut-throats—the very scum of hell, and under the order of a Portuguese devil, whose ambition coolly plotted murder. I was sailing under the black flag, to be hung if captured, compelled to act out the masquerade, a satellite of the most infamous ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... crimes and misdemeanors; but, happily, in their eagerness to cover us with obloquy, they frequently refuted each other. Thus they one day charged us with having prepared long beforehand to crush Spain and to rob her of her West Indian possessions, and the next day they charged us with plunging into war suddenly, recklessly, utterly careless of the consequences. One moment they insisted that American sailors belonged to a deteriorated race of mongrels, and could never stand against ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... the millionaire, leaning forward and linking his hands together, while he stared at the ground. "I am proud of having the gentle Romany blood. All the same I prefer the West Indian legend, for I don't want any of my civilized friends to know that I am Ishmael Hearne, born and bred in ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... absinth and some West Indian bitters," Granet replied. "A chap who often goes to the States brought it back for me. Gives a cocktail the real Yankee twang, ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... all that was of most public interest in the thirty years of my father's life after his return from Greece. Except during a brief period of active service in his profession, when he had command of the British squadron in North American and West Indian waters, those thirty years were chiefly spent in efforts—by scientific research, by mechanical experiment, and by persevering argument—to increase the naval power of his country, and in efforts no less zealous to secure for himself that ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... of the back country contrive to waft the produce of their plantations down the river on floats, during the floods, in spring and fall; which will be conveyed by means of this new road to Philadelphia, whence it will be exported to the west indian ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... retaliation, were perfectly justified in making slaves of their captives. The human mind can not withhold its assent from the justice of the verdict, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." The English made all their captives slaves, and women and children were sold to all the horrors of West Indian plantation bondage. The Narraganset Indian who owned Mrs. Rowlandson soon sold her to a celebrated chieftain named Quinnapin, a Narraganset sachem, who had married, for one of his three wives, Wetamoo, of whom we have heretofore ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... appeared to be a most lonely and languishing place of incarceration. We inspected the cells, and observed in one of them a peculiar handle fastened against the wall. This proved to be a West Indian substitute for the treadmill. The turning of the handle can be made easy or difficult by an arrangement of screws without the cell. The affair is set for a certain number of revolutions, and a warder explained to us that where hard ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Blyden, L.L.D., president of Liberia College, a West Indian, is a scholar of marvellous erudition, a writer of rare abilities, a subtle reasoner, a preacher of charming graces, and one of the foremost Negroes of the world. He is himself the best argument in favor of the Negro's capacity for Christian civilization. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... writers. The great range of burning mountains of the Andes of Chili, Peru, Bolivia, and Mexico, that of the Aleutian Islands, of Kamtschatka and the Kurile Islands, extending southwards into the Philippines, and the branching range of the Sunda Islands are well-known examples. That of the West Indian Islands, ranging from Grenada through St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Martinique, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Montserrat, Nevis, and St. Eustace,[1] is also a remarkable example of the linear arrangement of volcanic mountains. On tracing these ranges on a map of the world[2] ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... existing, in fact, in the States separately and not in the general government, the efforts to abolish it, by appeals to public opinion, have been fruitless except when confined to single States. In Great Britain the question was simple. The power to abolish slavery in her West Indian colonies was vested in Parliament. To agitate the people of England, and call out a full expression of sentiment, was to control Parliament and secure its abolition. The success of the English abolitionists, in the ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... able to get out of the schooner, and the admirable seamanship of her commander enabled them to reach the sought-for shelter before the fury of the West Indian hurricane came on. It was rough work, but with two anchors down, the Teal managed to ride out the blast, and fortunately for her crew the storm subsided as quickly as it had risen, leaving them free to run in for Velova with a gentle breeze over a heavy swell, which ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... States, to allow public women to come on board at some of the ports and to go down to the men between decks, the Department of the Navy being probably actuated by the same humane principle that used to induce some of the West Indian cannibals to lend their wives to their prisoners of war who were intended, in the shape of roast or fricandeau, to grace the festive board, as it was deemed inhuman by these philanthropists to ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America upon Slave Keeping. The second edition with observations on a pamphlet entitled Slavery not Forbidden by the Scripture or a Defense of the West Indian Planters by a Pennsylvanian. (Philadelphia, 1773.) The Negroes' need of ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... been paid to him by the King and some of his Ministers previous to the realisation of the full force of public indignation. Bathurst sent him a letter in 1823 reminding him that his treatment had been beyond that of ordinary governors, that he was working out an idea of having him recommended to a West Indian governorship, and that he was not to suppose that this gracious interest in him was in order to silence the clamour that was being raised against him. This communication was made in November, and in December Lowe was told that he was to go to Antigua ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... blows nobody good," said Dennis, as we hung over the side. "If it's for repairs we've put into Paradise, long life to the old tub and her rotten timbers! I wouldn't have missed this for a lady's berth in the West Indian Mail, ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... night Lord George Bentinck brought forward his motion for 'a select committee to inquire into the present condition and prospects of the interests connected with and dependent on sugar and coffee planting in her Majesty's East and West Indian possessions and the Mauritius, and to consider whether any and what measures can be adopted by Parliament for their relief.' When he entered the House, Lord George walked up to the head of the second bench below the gangway, on the opposition side, and thus significantly announced that he was ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... the negro has corrupted the English of the South, why is it that he has not also corrupted the language of the West Indies—British and French? French negroes speak like French persons of white blood, and British West Indian negroes often speak the cockney dialect, without a trace of "nigger." Moreover, it is pointed out that in southern countries, the world over, there is a tendency to soften the harsh sounds of language, to elide, and drop out consonants. The Andalusians speak a Spanish ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... a single summer day on these island shores is something impossible to express, never to be forgotten. Rarely, in the paler zones, do earth and heaven take such luminosity: those will best understand me who have seen the splendor of a West Indian sky. And yet there is a tenderness of tint, a caress of color, in these Gulf-days which is not of the Antilles,—a spirituality, as of eternal tropical spring. It must have been to even such a sky that Xenophanes lifted up his eyes of old when he vowed the Infinite Blue was God;—it was indeed under ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... of considerable social progress"; that "uninterrupted harmony" had "prevailed between the colonists and the local government"; that "the spirit of enterprise" which had proceeded from Jamaica for two years had "enabled the British West Indian colonies to endure with comparative fortitude, apprehensions and difficulties which otherwise might ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... independence, and muzzle the cannon which thunders its annual joyous return. They must renew the slave trade, with all its train of atrocities. They must suppress the workings of British philanthropy, seeking to meliorate the condition of the unfortunate West Indian slave. They must arrest the career of South American deliverance from thraldom. They must blow out the moral lights around us and extinguish that greatest torch of all which America presents to a benighted world—pointing the way to their rights, their liberties, and their ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... Negro population of the City was noticed first. The British West Indies furnish 5.8 per cent of these foreign Negro immigrants, while the Danish West Indies, Cuba, and those islands not specified, together make up 3.6 per cent, a total of 9.4 per cent West Indian.[47] Table XIII (p. 59) gives a survey of this part of the population and shows its relation to the ...
— The Negro at Work in New York City - A Study in Economic Progress • George Edmund Haynes
... town life. The people lived too close together for her liking, at the Landing, and she could not get used to the constant sound of the sea. She had lived to lament three seafaring husbands, and her house was decorated with West Indian curiosities, specimens of conch shells and fine coral which they had brought home from their voyages in lumber-laden ships. Mrs. Todd had told me all our neighbor's history. They had been girls together, and, to use her own phrase, had "both seen trouble ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... news-distributing center for the whole Cuban coast; the supply-depot to which perhaps a hundred vessels resorted for water, food, and ammunition; the home station of all the newspaper despatch-boats cruising in West Indian waters; the temporary headquarters of more than a hundred newspaper correspondents and reporters, and the most advanced outpost of the United States on the edge of war. In view of the importance which the ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... in England, upon the occasion of my first visit, about a year; and then returned to Kingston. Before long I again started for London, bringing with me this time a large stock of West Indian preserves and pickles for sale. After remaining two years here, I again started home; and on the way my life and adventures were very nearly brought to a premature conclusion. Christmas-day had been kept very merrily on board our ship the "Velusia;" and on the following ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... about two thousand souls, and may seem to claim no more attention at the hands of the ethnologist than any other obscure Indian tribe. But if it can be shown that in former centuries they occupied the whole of the West Indian archipelago to within a few miles of the shore of the northern continent, then on the question whether their affiliations are with the tribes of the northern or southern mainland, depends our opinion of the course of migration of the primitive inhabitants of the western world. And if this is ...
— The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations • Daniel G. Brinton
... and feeling of unpleasantness towards my young brother Campbell, who, being a West Indian, probably did not understand those white Americans, and formed his opinion of American blacks and their capacity to "lead," from the estimate they set upon them. I owe it to posterity, the destiny of my race, the great adventure into which I am ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... several of the West Indian islands of volcanic origin; and three of them—St. Vincent, Martinique, and Guadaloupe—contain active volcanoes. The most remarkable is the volcano of Morne- Garou, in St. Vincent, the eruptions from which have been particularly violent. In 1812 the ashes which it threw out were so ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... WEST INDIAN MISSION.—The Moravians commenced their mission on the Island of St. Thomas in 1732. Its commencement was occasioned by a conversation between a negro, named Anthony, and some servants of Count Zinzendorf. The negro said he had a sister at St. Thomas, who was deeply anxious to be instructed ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... the return to her native air seemed to have a beneficial effect on my mother's health. But it was a temporary improvement only. Her constitution had been fatally injured by the West Indian climate, and just as we had engaged a competent person to look after my neglected education, my constant attendance was needed at my mother's bedside. We loved each other dearly, and we wanted no strange nurses to come between us. My aunt (my mother's sister) relieved me of my cares in ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... very similar habits, the Indian mongoose (Herpestus griseus or H. mungo), has been naturalized in Jamaica, whence it has been carried to other West Indian Islands, and in the Hawaiian group. It has also been tried, but unsuccessfully, in Australia. The first introduction into Jamaica took place in 1872, and ten years later the animal was credited with saving many thousands of pounds annually by its destruction of rats. But before ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... ship's company soon shared his enthusiasm, and the very sailors gathered about him in the intervals of their work, or hung on the outskirts of the scientific circle. A pause of a few days was made at one or two of the West Indian islands, at St. Thomas and Barbados. At the latter, the first cast of the large dredge was made on a ledge of shoals in a depth of eighty fathoms, and, among countless other things, a number of stemmed crinoids and comatulae were brought up. An ardent student of the early ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... far beyond it, when the Spanish expedition led by Hernando Cortes landed on the coast. The expedition was the fruit of an age and a people eager for adventure, for gain, for glory, and for the conversion of barbaric peoples to the Christian faith. The Spaniards were established in the West Indian Islands, and sought further extension of their dominions in the West, whence rumours of great treasure had reached them. Thus it happened that Velasquez, the Spanish Governor of Cuba, designed to send a fleet to explore the mainland, to gain what treasure he could by ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... on the slavery issue. He was an intense abolitionist. As a lad of sixteen or seventeen, he had given up sugar, at the end of the 'twenties, because in those days sugar was grown by slaves on the West Indian plantations. He would not support a slave industry, and until the slaves were freed he did not go back ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... P. Phelps's careful handbook of "Albany and the Capitol:" in 1614 a stockaded trading-house was erected on an island below the city, well defended for trading with the Indians. In 1617 another was built on the hill, near Norman's Kill. The West Indian Company erected a fort in 1623 near the present landing of the Day Line. In 1664 the province fell into the hands of the English and the name was changed to Albany. In 1686 it was incorporated into a city. It was the meeting place of the Constitutional Congress 1754, ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... extensive plantations on the island of Cuba, manufacture their cigars exclusively from selected leaves grown by themselves.' They would hardly make a Trichinopoly cheroot from leaf grown in the West Indies, so we have here a striking anomaly of an East Indian cigar sent to us by a West Indian grower." ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... have gone, the relation generally holds good. We see Britain separated by a shallow channel from Europe, and the mammals are the same on both sides; we meet with analogous facts on many islands separated by similar channels from Australia. The West Indian Islands stand on a deeply submerged bank, nearly 1000 fathoms in depth, and here we find American forms, but the species and even the genera are distinct. As the amount of modification in all cases depends to a certain ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... part in building a prosperous colony at Jamestown, there were several other staples that also contributed to this result. Of prime importance should be rated maize or Indian Corn. Maize saved the colony from starvation on several occasions. Maize became an export commodity to the New England and West Indian colonies when the price for tobacco fell below the cost of transportation to Europe. Maize aided the colonists in the production of valuable livestock products. This crop has done more to promote the wealth and welfare of this country than all the natural resources, water-power, ...
— Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Lyman Carrier
... Chinese. It is evident he alludes to the English. An agreement, it is very probable, might be readily entered into with the Portuguese for the possession of that place, which could not fail to prove most convenient for our eastern commerce. An equivalent may be found among the West Indian islands; but it is perhaps equally vain and invidious to speculate on such very distant concerns, when the wonderful events now occurring in a kingdom so long the torment and the teacher of nations, arrest the imagination ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... greatly discomfited at the vanishing of her noble vision of the heroic self-devoted father, and ready on the other hand to believe him a villain, like Bertram Risingham, or 'the Pirate,' being possessed by this idea on account of his West Indian voyages. At any rate, she was determined not to be accepted or acknowledged without her mother, and was already ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for wages, and the soldiers were forced to forage for themselves in the neighbouring country. At last the fleet set sail (8 Oct., 1625). Its destination proved to be Cadiz, whither it was despatched in the hope of securing West Indian treasure on its way home. The expedition, however, turned out to be as complete a failure as that under Mansfeld in ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... several other plants of Jamaica, the isle of Cuba, and of the neighbouring continent. The current carries thither also barrels of French wine, well preserved, the remains of the cargoes of vessels wrecked in the West Indian seas. To these examples of the distant migration of the vegetable world, others no less striking may be added. The wreck of an English vessel, the Tilbury, burnt near Jamaica, was found on the coast of Scotland. On these same coasts are sometimes ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... a West Indian tree. They are of different colors, very hard, and capable of being handsomely polished. They are called "sea-beans" because great numbers of them drift up on the Florida ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... Service Reform. Perfecting of Party Organization in the Country. Jackson and the United States Bank. His Popularity. Revival of West Indian Trade. French Spoliation Claims. Paid. Our Gold and Silver Coinage. Gold Bill. Increased Circulation of Gold. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... of West Indian life by an author who combined abundant personal experience with keen observation, sprightly temper, and delightful humour. "Tom Cringle's Log" has been many times reprinted, and has lost nothing of its popularity and ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... another in Italy, a visit to London, and several excursions into the South of France. In 1868 she proceeded to Martinique, where her eldest son had for some years been established. We believe she has published her West Indian experiences and impressions. But we have given up to Madame de Hell as much of our limited space as we can spare, and now take leave of her with the acknowledgment that among modern female travellers she deserves a high rank in virtue of her intelligence, her sympathies, and her keen ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... nine ships under Rear-Admiral Lucas, sent out to recover the Cape and the other East Indian possessions, was compelled to surrender to the English in Saldanha Bay on August 17, 1796, almost without resistance, owing to the Orange sympathies of the crews. The West Indian Colonies fared no better. Demerara, Essequibo and Berbice capitulated in the spring of 1796; Surinam remained in Dutch hands until 1799; Java until 1801. The occupation by the English of this island, the most important of all ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... caused by the ejected fragments and ashes being always blown, during eruptions, in greater quantity towards one side than towards the other. M. Moreau de Jonnes has made a similar observation with respect to the volcanic orifices in the West Indian Islands. ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... (imagine a letter T with the lower end lengthened out into an oar-blade). And at every pull they push their feet against the gunwales to give more force to the stroke; intoning in every pause a strange refrain of which the soft melancholy calls back to me certain old Spanish Creole melodies heard in West Indian waters: ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... sight of your poor daughter, and I knew him well enough to be aware that to put her entirely and secretly out of his reach was the only chance preserving her from his pursuit. I had excellent accounts of the worthy man to whom I meant her to be consigned, and I knew that when she wrote to you as a West Indian queen you would be able to forgive your poor cousin. I see what you would say, but sending her to you was impossible, since I had to secure her both from Amyas and from Mar. It would only have ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reading. It was in the last quarter of the century that English admirals learned to fight again at close quarters, and to strike crushing blows at an enemy. The new period of energetic, decisive fighting began with a famous battle in West Indian waters in 1782, and culminated in the world-renowned victories of Nelson, who was a young captain on the North American station "when Rodney beat the Comte de Grasse" in the battle of the ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... may direct it in as many different ways; and in every picture of the future there is a dim spot, which the eye of the understanding cannot penetrate. It appears, however, to be extremely probable that in the West Indian Islands the white race is destined to be subdued, and the black population to share the same fate upon ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... time before the letter came, as she had guessed it would be. He had written on shipboard, and the letter came back to her from Greater Inagua, the first West Indian island at which his ship had touched. Coming in one September evening from a long walk through the hazy air, its breath fragrant with the peculiar pungent odour of distant forest fires, Dorothy found the letter on the hall table. She knew it was ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... christened Allan, after the name of a wealthy cousin of my father's—the late Allan Armadale—who possessed estates in our neighborhood, the largest and most productive in the island, and who consented to be my godfather by proxy. Mr. Armadale had never seen his West Indian property. He lived in England; and, after sending me the customary godfather's present, he held no further communication with my parents for years afterward. I was just twenty-one before we heard again from Mr. Armadale. On that occasion my mother received a letter from him asking if I was still ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... society of the capital Mr. Delaplaine renewed his previous intercourse and Kate soon learned the pleasures of a colonial social circle, whose attractions, brought from afar, had been warmed into a more cheerful glow in this bright West Indian atmosphere. ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... menaced if the war was renewed. Under these circumstances Grenville determined that a small army of ten thousand men should be kept in America, under the distinct promise that it was never to serve beyond that country and the West Indian Isles, and he asked America to contribute 100,000l. a year, or about a third ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... ascribe the first inventions to men, yet you will rather believe that Prometheus first stroke the flints, and marvelled at the spark, than that when he first stroke the flints he expected the spark; and therefore we see the West Indian Prometheus had no intelligence with the European, because of the rareness with them of flint, that gave the first occasion. So as it should seem, that hitherto men are rather beholden to a wild goat for surgery, or to a nightingale for music, ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... January 5, 1833, and entered the (p. 363) British Royal Navy as assistant-surgeon, November 10, 1855. He was employed on the home station, on particular service on the North American, West Indian, and West Coast of Africa stations, until June, 1863. While in Jamaica in April, 1858, with the permission of his commanding officer, Admiral Sir Hewston Stewart, Royal Navy, he volunteered, at imminent personal risk, his services on board the United States vessel-of-war ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... here is a piece of cassava bread, I brought you, as you thought you would like to taste it. My old West Indian patient keeps me well supplied. I fancy to nibble it as I drive about in my cabriolet, or whatever they call this French ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Free State have imported as labourers both West Indian negroes—principally Barbadians—and Chinamen. In both cases the mortality has been terrible—more than the white mortality, which competent authorities put down for the Congo at 77 per cent., and the experiment ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Lister a man of great resolution, captaine Edward Carelesse, alias Wright, who in sir Francis Drakes West Indian voyage to S. Domingo and Carthagena, was captaine of the Hope. Captaine Boswell, M. Meruin, M. Henry Long, M. Partridge, M. Norton, M. William Mounson captaine of the Meg, and his viceadmirall, now sir William Mounson, M. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... treaty made at Paris in 1773, United States produce for British West Indian ports could only be carried by British subjects in British ships. Britain's men-of-war were also authorized to seize any vessel laden with produce for or from any French colony. Brock was a soldier, not a policeman, and coast-guard duties palled upon ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... friend, do not, do not repine, but rather rejoice for your brother's own sake, that wealth is cut off from him at such a source as slavery. [Mr. Fitzhugh had owned West Indian property, which his sister thought had been rendered worthless by the emancipation of the slaves.] It would be better in my mind to beg, and to see one's children beg, than to live by these means, thinking ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Little Russian Cousin Our Little Scotch Cousin Our Little Servian Cousin Our Little Siamese Cousin Our Little South African (Boer) Cousin Our Little Spanish Cousin Our Little Swedish Cousin Our Little Swiss Cousin Our Little Turkish Cousin Our Little West Indian Cousin ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... Preston were sold as slaves to some West Indian merchants, which was a cruel proceeding, when it is considered that the greater part of these men were Highlanders, who had joined the army in obedience to the commands of their chiefs. Wholly unfitted for such labor ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... There was a great clamour in every quarter, and the clamour was against the Whigs and in favour of Conservative principles. What Canadian timber-merchants meant by Conservative principles, it is not difficult to conjecture; or West Indian planters. It was tolerably clear on the hustings what squires and farmers, and their followers, meant by Conservative principles. What they mean by Conservative principles now is another question: and whether Conservative principles ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... accompany the ladies till he had seen them safe at the Castle. He made anxious inquiries after the Earl, and found, from the account they gave him, that he was greatly broken in health, not having recovered from the effects of the West Indian climate, or the loss of his son. In many respects the meeting could not fail to be a sad one. The sight of Captain Denham recalled painfully to Lady Sophy the death of her intended husband, while Lady Nora, ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... Within me is the longest day, the sun wheels in slanting rings, it does not set for months, Stretch'd in due time within me the midnight sun just rises above the horizon and sinks again, Within me zones, seas, cataracts, forests, volcanoes, groups, Malaysia, Polynesia, and the great West Indian islands. ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... days, I had been exposed, half naked and bareheaded, in an open boat, without water, or food, or shade. The third fierce cloudless West Indian noon was long passed, and once more the dry burning sun sank in the west, like a red—hot shield of iron. In my horrible extremity, I imprecated the wrath of Heaven on my defenceless head, and shaking my clenched hands against the brazen ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... and some rich West Indian fabrics for ladies' dresses. A cask of spirits and a box of cigars have gone up to the castle. Old Mr. ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... generation which recognized thoroughly for the first time that the negro was a man and brother, did it dawn that beyond the negro there were other still humbler claimants for benevolence and justice. Within a few years, passed both the Emancipation of the West Indian slaves and the first act for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, of which Lord Erskine so truly prophesied that it would prove not only an honor to the Parliament of England, but an era in the civilization ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... this long war and sanctioned by the peace, neglecting details of lesser or passing importance, may be stated as follows: 1. The House of Bourbon was settled on the Spanish throne, and the Spanish empire retained its West Indian and American possessions; the purpose of William III. against her dominion there was frustrated when England undertook to support the Austrian prince, and so fastened the greater part of her naval force to the Mediterranean. 2. The Spanish empire lost its possessions in the Netherlands, ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... Club are all good, one especially so, a retired Colonel of a West Indian regiment, of whom I stand in mortal dread. He has short shrift for any failings, even of players nearly as good as himself, whilst as for me! though he has never yet resorted to personal violence with a chair-leg, yet that would not surprise ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... 1749, the son of this Thomas, and grandfather of the poet, became a clerk in the Bank of England, and rose to be principal in the Bank Stock Office. At the age of twenty-nine he married Margaret Tittle, a lady born in the West Indies and possessed of West Indian property. He is described by Mrs Orr as an able, energetic, and worldly man. He lived until his grandson was twenty-one years old. His first wife was the mother of another Robert, the poet's father, born in 1781. When the boy had reached the age of seven he lost his mother, and five years later ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... A young West Indian chanced one night to enter one of the gaming houses in London, and began trying his chance at Roulette. Fortune favoured him at first, and he won ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... back, the men anyhow, were for the most part charming and wonderful people, very simple and emotional, so that once a big bearded man, when I wanted him in the face of an overflowing waggon to abandon about half-a-dozen great angular colored West Indian shells he had lugged with him from Bermuda, burst into tears of disappointment. I let him take them, and at the end I saw them placed with joy and reverence in a little parlor, to become the war heirlooms ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... the two New Worlds, they leapt up when the great sun called them, in whirls and spouts of clear hot steam; and rushed of their own passion to the northward, while the whirling earth-ball whirled them east. So north- eastward they rushed aloft, across the gay West Indian isles, leaving below the glitter of the flying-fish, and the sidelong eyes of cruel sharks; above the cane-fields and the plaintain-gardens, and the cocoa- groves which fringe the shores; above the rocks which throbbed with earthquakes, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... mauvaise machine, ca"—speaking into it with the greatest distinctness—"HEL-L-LOH. Barbu? Liberte, Barbu. Oui. Comment? C'est ca. Liberte pour tou'l'monde. Quand? Apres la soupe. Oui. Liberte pour tou'l'monde apres la soupe!"—to which jest astonishingly reacted a certain old man known as the West Indian Negro (a stocky credulous creature with whom Jean would have nothing to do, and whose tales of Brooklyn were indeed outclassed by Jean's histoires d'amour) who leaped rheumatically from his paillasse at the word "Liberte" and rushed ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... Madagascar is the home of very singular and special insectivorous beasts of the genera Centetes, Ericulus, and Echinops; while the only other member of the group to which they belong is Solenodon, which is a resident in the West Indian Islands, Cuba and Hayti. The connexion, however, between the West Indies and Madagascar must surely have been at a time when the great lemurine group was absent; for it is difficult to understand the spread of such a form as ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... us to the boat, and we were handed tenderly up the side. There, the ship's surgeon and everybody else on board did their best to restore us after our terrible experience. The ship was the Don, of the Royal Mail Steamship Company's West Indian line; and nothing could exceed the kindness with which we were treated by every soul on board, from the captain to the stewardess and the junior cabin-boy. Sebastian's great name carried weight even here. As soon as it was generally understood on board ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... the captain, he had been for years in coasters, then in the Mediterranean, and last in the West Indian trade. He had never been round the Capes. He could just write a kind of sketchy hand, and didn't care for writing at all. Both were thorough good seamen of course, and between those two old chaps I felt like a small boy between ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... British officer who might need his services. Amherst sent in several letters and messages from wounded Frenchmen, and a special message from himself to Madame Drucour, complimenting her upon her bravery, and begging her acceptance of some West Indian pineapples. Once more the flag of truce came out, this time to return the compliment with a basket of wine. As the gate swung to, the cannon roared again on either side. Amherst's was no unmerited compliment; for Madame Drucour used to mount the ramparts ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... Zobair, Busrah, and Mohammrah, the summer temperature is still higher; and, owing to the moisture of the atmosphere, consequent on the vicinity of the sea, the heat is of that peculiarly oppressive character which prevails on the sea-coast of Hindustan, in Ceylon, in the West Indian Islands, at New Orleans, and in other places whose situation is similar. The vital powers languish under this oppression, which produces in the European a lassitude of body and a prostration of mind that wholly unfit him for active duties. On the Asiatic, however, these influences seem to have ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... for hours, Mister," spoke up the little, shrivelled, leathery-skinned West Indian negro, who spoke English without a trace of dialect, "and I was sure ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... on board, by birth a West Indian, engaged to dive under the ship's bottom, and to acquaint us with the state of it, which was gladly accepted. In his youth he had been a fisherman on the coast of the island of Jamaica: the weather being rough, it was thought unsafe for him to venture; but on the following ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... before you exhibits the disposition of the British West Indian squadron under Rodney, when, early on the morning of the 9th of April, in the year of our blessed Lord 1782, he discovered part of the French fleet, commanded by the Count de Grasse, lying under the north end of the Island of Dominica. It was at this juncture that the Admiral gave the signal ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... were joined by most of the ships on the West Indian station, and on the 21st April, 1796, the augmented fleet, under the command of Sir John Laforey, sailed to Marin Bay, Martinique, where they anchored. On the following day Sir John Laforey resigned his command to Admiral Christian and ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... misery which he had witnessed, and on the relation of which he himself almost wept. But mark the issue again.—"I am a surgeon," says he: "through that window you see a spacious house. It is occupied by a West Indian. The medical attendance upon his family is of considerable importance to the temporal interests of mine. If I give you my evidence I lose his patronage. At the house above him lives an East Indian. The two families are ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... Greenock to Edinburgh, where he abode for a short time. Thence he started for London; and, desirous of testing the best way of sustaining physical strength during long marches, and urged perhaps also by economical considerations, he resolved to make the journey on foot. His West Indian and American experience had taught him that spare diet consisted best with pedestrian efficiency, and it was accordingly his practice, during this long walk, to abstain from animal food until the close of day, nor often then to partake of it. He would walk some ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... wife wanted a candle box, an article of common domestic use of the time. The Doctor, who had laid by in the garden of his house in King Street, Covent Garden, some planks sent to him by his brother, a West Indian captain, asked the joiner to use a part of the wood for this purpose; it was found too tough and hard for the tools of the period, but the Doctor was not to be thwarted, and insisted on harder-tempered tools being found, ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... of the pattern be red or pink? and the columbines blue or purple? She could make a beautiful purple by steeping the sugar paper which wrapped her precious cone of West Indian "loaf sugar," and sugar-paper purple was reasonably fast. So ran the thoughts of the dear, straight-featured Puritan wife as she sorted her colors and ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... most famous. His character was a curious medley of incongruous features, bluff straightforwardness and crooked diplomacy, faithful affection—such as his bold schemes to help his captured comrades proved—balanced by a hard indifference that ignored the misery of the wretched negroes he sold to West Indian planters. Pluck and daring were the only qualities he showed consistently from first to last. His zeal in slave-hunting, repulsive to us, is excused by Froude on the ground that 'negro slavery in theory was an invention of philanthropy.' Labourers ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... commanded "most awful respect," and doubtless received it from planter and farmer. With him came Thomas Pollock, leader of the Glover faction, owner of 55,000 acres of land, numerous flocks of sheep and herds of cattle and of many vessels trading with the New England and West Indian ports, a merchant prince of colonial days, and destined to become twice acting Governor ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... but to return to the east-south-east, in quest of Babeque, which he trusted might prove some rich and civilized island on the coast of Asia." And so he sailed away for Hispaniola (Santo Domingo) which appears to have become, a little later, his favorite West Indian resort. ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... knowledge[569].' Upon one occasion, when in company with some very grave men at Oxford, his toast was, 'Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies[570].' His violent prejudice against our West Indian and American settlers appeared whenever there was an opportunity[571]. Towards the conclusion of his Taxation no Tyranny, he says, 'how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes[572]?' and in his ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... universal—our enemies themselves being witnesses. You know how widely and how continuously, for generations, the Negro has been traduced, ridiculed, derided. Some of you may remember the journals and the hostile criticisms of Coleridge and Trollope and Burton, West Indian and African travelers. Very many of you may remember the philosophical disquisitions of the ethnological school of 1847, the contemptuous dissertations of Hunt and Gliddon. But it is worthy of notice in all these cases that the sneer, the contempt, the bitter ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... he has picked up a great deal of Latin since he has been helping me; knows ten times as much as he did about America and the West Indian Islands, and has picked up a host of little natural history facts, for he is always ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... logwood, and various medicinal plants. Here, too, is the favorite zone of the coffee tree, which thrives best one thousand feet above sea level. The valleys and plains produce rich harvests of sugar-cane and tobacco. The amount of sugar yielded by a given area is said to be greater than in any other West Indian island. Rice, of the mountain variety and grown without flooding, nourishes almost any place and is a staple food of the laboring classes. In addition to these products cotton and maize are commonly cultivated, and yams, plantains, oranges, bananas, cocoanuts, pineapples, and ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... BIT. A West Indian silver coin, varying from 4d. to 6d. In America it is 12-1/2 cents, and in the Spanish settlements is equal with the real, or one-eighth of a dollar. It was, in fact, Spanish money cut into bits, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... cannot utter it." This sea which bears us would rot and poison, did it not sweep in and out here twice a day in swift refreshing current; nay, more, in the very water which laps against our bows troops of negro girls may have hunted the purblind shark in West Indian harbours, beneath glaring white-walled towns, with their rows of green jalousies, and cocoa- nuts, and shaddock groves. For on those white sands there to the left, year by year, are washed up foreign canes, cassia beans, and tropic seeds; and sometimes, too, the tropic ocean snails, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... rate apartment houses, with a flossy reception room, all marble slabs and burlap panels and no elevator. The West Indian at the telephone exchange says we'll find the Mallorys on the top floor back to the left. That meant four flights to climb, which might account for the lack of conversation on the way up. Mallory, with his coat ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... of an article is a simple matter, but keeping the customer sold is our principal aim."—Advt. in West Indian Paper. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... succeeded, in consequence, in weathering the storm for them all. And after his death, a nephew of my mother's, a young man who had served his apprenticeship under him, was treated with great kindness on the Spanish Main, for his sake, by a West Indian captain, whose ship and crew he had saved, as the captain told the lad, by boarding them in a storm, at imminent risk to himself, and working their vessel into port, when, in circumstances of similar exhaustion, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... period, was limited in its proportions, and composed of elements more refined though far less various. It consisted mainly of the great landed aristocracy, who had quite absorbed the nabobs of India, and had nearly appropriated the huge West Indian fortunes. Occasionally, an eminent banker or merchant invested a large portion of his accumulations in land, and in the purchase of parliamentary influence, and was in time duly admitted into the sanctuary. ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... its doors for the swarthy little West Indian. He was allowed to choose his own course, and every advantage of the university was offered him. In a university, you get just all you are able to hold—it depends upon yourself—and at the last all men who are made at ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... be so impatient, Deena; it is mighty nasty sailing through West Indian waters, and a boat of that size doesn't carry enough fuel for a prolonged voyage; they will have to stop for coal somewhere on ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... stern chase through the West Indian Islands, and perhaps in and out and along the coasts of the Southern American States—wherever, in fact, the plantations are worked by slaves whose supplies are kept up by traders such as the scoundrel ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... in every one's eyes save his father's, his own sister, and lamely concluded "to take a draught of water," blushing under his brown skin as he spoke. Poor fellow! the Queen, even while she wished him in the farthest West Indian isle, could not help understanding that strange doubt and dread that come over the mind at the last moment before a longed-for meeting, and which had made even the bold young sailor glad to rally his hopes by this divination. Fortunately she thought ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hour of their triumph that the end at which they aimed had been fully reached. In half their great effort against the world-power of Britain they had utterly failed. She had even won ground in India. In America itself she still retained the northern dominion of Canada. Her West Indian islands remained intact. Above all, she had asserted more nobly than ever her command of the sea, and with it the possibility of building up a fresh power in such lands as Cook had called her to. But at the close of the war there was less thought of what she had retained than of what she had lost. ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... pronouncing a glowing panegyric upon the eloquent and statesmanlike speech of the gallant colonel—myself; then I thought I was making arrangements for setting out for my new appointment, and Sancho Panza never coveted the government of an island more than I did, though only a West Indian one; and, lastly, I saw myself the chosen diplomate on a difficult mission, and was actually engaged in the easy and agreeable occupation of outmaneuvering Talleyrand and Pozzo di Borgo, when Peter suddenly drew up at the door of a small ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... of the eighteenth century piracy was on the wane, and practically had died out by the beginning of the nineteenth, the final thrust that destroyed it being given by the American and English Navies in the North Atlantic and West Indian Seas. But by this time piracy had degenerated to mere sea-robbing, the days of gallant and ruthless sea-battles had passed, and the pirate of those decadent days was generally a Spanish-American half-breed, with no courage, a mere robber ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... splendid as to silence for generations all inquiry into its origin or character. It secured its possessors not only easy access, but frequent intermarriages among the aristocracy of England, who thus in time came to be among the largest West Indian slaveholders. Jamaica was justly reckoned one of the brightest jewels in the British crown. But the brilliancy was merely that of wealth, and as the ownership of this was transferred more and more to Great Britain, the island itself at length ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... well. His father had mentioned it as that of a conspirator who was in some way active in a West Indian plot. ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... much more likely to be associated with, or to have the same origin as, the 'Duffy' of the West Indian negroes. Among them Duffy means a ghost; and in the vocabulary of the gutter it may easily have been taken as the equivalent of soul. The transition from Duffy to Davy ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... Leone. I hope they will so do; more competition is much wanted. But the coal-depot may prove dangerous. The mineral in the tropics produces by its exhalations fatal fevers, especially that exaggerated form of bilious-remittent popularly known as 'Yellow Jack.' It is certain that in places like West Indian St. Thomas the neighbourhood of the coal-sheds is more unhealthy, without apparent reason, than the ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... in the Atlantic, this earthquake spread one enormous convulsion over an area of 700,000 square miles, agitating, by a single impulse, the lakes of Scotland and Sweden, and the islands of the West Indian Sea. Not, however, by a simultaneous shock, for the element of time comes in with the distance of undulation; and, together with this, another complexity of action in the transmission of earthquake movements through the sea, arising from the different rate of progression at different ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... minerals; was discovered by Columbus in 1492, and has now a population of 80 millions, of which a fourth are negroes, aborigines, and half-caste; the divisions are British North America, United States, Mexico, Central American Republics, British Honduras, the West Indian Republics, and the Spanish, British, French, and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... an American, was, in all respects, from the habits of his life, a citizen of the world. He was born at a small village called Groton, in Connecticut, on the banks of the Thames; his father was a captain in the West Indian trade, but died young, leaving a widow and four children, of whom John was the eldest; his mother is described as "a lady of many excellences of mind and character, beautiful in person, well informed, resolute, generous, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... large, is still little more than we voluntarily paid to extinguish slavery in our West Indian dominions; it does not much exceed the amount which a Royal Commission, some little time ago, proposed to expend in erecting fortifications and sea-works to defend our shores. It is but six per cent, of the amount we have laid out on completing our own railway system in this little country ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... stockings; a bodice laced with silver, and covered with silver brooches and other ornaments; a waistbelt, which is sometimes entirely of metal; a kerchief tied over the head, after the fashion of the bandana of West Indian negresses; and on occasions ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... and drew the curtain of the large bow-window, so common in the West Indian houses, and the rich moonlight, now unvexed by the dull glare of the taper, flowed into the apartment, bathing every object it touched with silvery radiance. Clara sat in the window, in the full glow of the light, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Pitt! No. III. in all probability "choked off" a good proportion of the commonplace readers who might have been well content to have put up with the humanitarian rhetoric of No. IV., if only for its connection with so unquestionable an actuality as West Indian sugar. It was, anyhow, owing to successive alienations of this kind that on 13th May 1796 the editor of the Watchman was compelled to bid farewell to his few remaining readers in the tenth number of his periodical, for the "short and satisfactory" reason ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... being. Her eldest was a boy of ten years old, a fine spirited fellow, who longed to be out in the world; but what could she do? Was there any chance of his being hereafter useful to Sir Thomas in the concerns of his West Indian property? No situation would be beneath him; or what did Sir Thomas think of Woolwich? or how could a boy be sent out to ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... invitation to hold a conference in Baltimore was accepted. Arrangements were made to have a National Suffrage Conference September 9, 10, in Buffalo, N. Y., during the Pan-American Exposition. It was decided also to accept an invitation from the Inter-State and West Indian Exposition Board to hold a conference during the Exposition in Charleston, S. C. Official invitations were received from various public bodies to hold the next convention in Washington, Atlantic City, Milwaukee and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... swept up from French, American, English, Swedish, Spanish, Norwegian, Russian and West Indian bosoms. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Council did not reach the Duke of Cumberland till the day after the accession, and he was very angry. It had been sent to Kew. He is satisfied now. Goulburn has hit upon a mezzo termine which answers for the present session. He has reduced the duty on West Indian sugar to 24,9., and on East Indian sugar to 32s. The duty on other sugar to be 63s. I did not fail to tell Dudley and Bankes in what strong terms the King had expressed his determination to support ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... opened the drawers of the locker and looked through them in search of a duplicate; or of anything—even a wind-chart or a current-chart would have answered—that would serve my turn. But while there were charts in plenty of West Indian and of English waters, and a set covering the German Ocean, not a chart of any sort relating to the North Atlantic did I find. Neither were there chronometers nor any nautical instruments in the room. In one corner was a strongly made closet in which they may ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... what uncle Gregory would say if I were to marry a West Indian! He wouldn't say much to me, because we never speak, but he'd lead poor Greg a horrid life. He'd be sure to think she was a nigger, or at least a Creole. But I shan't ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... coincidence!" exclaimed Eliza Monk with a smile. "My mother was a West Indian, and I was born there.—There's my home, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... Colonies were estimated at two millions a year. And with the growth of wealth came a quick growth in population. That of Manchester and Birmingham, whose manufactures were now becoming of importance, doubled in thirty years. Bristol, the chief seat of the West Indian trade, rose into new prosperity. Liverpool, which owes its creation to the new trade with the West, sprang up from a little country town into the third port in the kingdom. With peace and security, ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... in the more humid districts, taking the place of the lemon, and one variety—the Tahiti—has proved itself to be a heavy and regular bearer. The West Indian lime, from which the lime juice of commerce is made, is very easily grown, particularly in the more tropical parts, where it is often met with growing in an entirely uncultivated condition, and bearing ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson
... in other frigates, during which he gained the personal familiarity with West Indian life of which his novels show many traces, he completed his time as a midshipman, and in 1812, returned home to pass. As a lieutenant his cruises were uneventful and, after being several times invalided, he was promoted Commander in 1815, just as the Great War was closing. He was now ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... Champion was a short distance ahead, leading the fleet. A bright look-out was kept, but no strangers were seen. Some hours' run brought the north-west end of Hispaniola in view. Ellen came on deck to enjoy her first sight of West Indian scenery. Lieutenant Foley was, as may be supposed, very happy in her society, and was in no hurry to make known his existence to his friends on board the Champion. He had as yet had no opportunity of signalling ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... e.g. of the Peppered Moth, are taking the place of the paler type in some parts of England, and the same is true of some dark forms of Sugar-bird in the West Indian islands. Very important is the piece of statistics worked out by Professor R. C. Punnett, that "if a population contains .001 per cent of a new variety, and if that variety has even a 5 per cent selection ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... They said that under a Board of Enquiry into the wreck, any efficient witness must of necessity state this as the fact, and could not possibly avoid the conclusion that the seamanship was utterly bad; and as to the force of the wind, for which I suggested allowance, they all had been in West Indian hurricanes and in Typhoons, and had put the heads of their ships to the wind ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... fleet at Toulon, and of a heavy defeat by Lord Howe off Ushant on the 1st of June, 1794, the strength of France was still formidable; and the losses which she inflicted on the commercial marine of her enemies exceeded those which she herself sustained. England, which had captured most of the French West Indian Islands, was the only Power that had wrested anything from the Republic. The dream of suppressing the Revolution by force of arms had vanished away; and the States which had entered upon the contest in levity, in fanaticism, or at the bidding ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the two rival merchant nations, which had been lulled in 1662 by a formal treaty of peace, but which still lived on in petty squabbles at sea, was embittered by the cession of Bombay—a port which gave England an entry into the profitable trade with India—as well as by the establishment of a West Indian Company in London which opened a traffic with the Gold Coast of Africa, and brought back from Guinea the gold from which our first "guineas" were struck. In both countries there was a general irritation which vented itself in cries ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... "adventurers" contributing to the expenses of the war, and all soldiers serving in it, grants of land in proportion to their service and contribution. This act, and a letter from Lord Essex, the Parliamentarian Commander-in-Chief, recommending the transportation of captured recusants to the West Indian Colonies, effectually put a stop to these negotiations. In Ulster, by the end of April, there were 19,000 troops, regulars and volunteers, in the garrison or in the field. Newry was taken by Monroe and Chichester, where 80 men and women and 2 priests were put to death. Magennis ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... about which Edward Alden inquired in your issue of July 26. and which is quoted in Stevenson's "Treasure Island," is the opening stanza of an old song or chantey of West Indian piracy, which is believed to have originated from the wreck of an English buccaneer on a cay in the Caribbean Sea known as "The Dead Man's Chest." The cay was so named from its fancied resemblance to the old sailors' sea chest which held his scanty belongings. ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... But there is a West Indian Island which for me is the best in the seas, because the memory of it is but a reflection of my last glimpse of the tropics. That landfall in the Spanish Main was as soundless as a dream. It was but an apparition of land. It might have been no more than an unusually vivid recollection of ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... land of the Wild West Indian and buffalo days, so wild a country that it never lived down its reputation. Buffalo, antelope, and elk ranged in common in herds of hundreds of thousands, while in the rough shores of the river lived countless ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... race extended—from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata and the boundless plains of the Pampas, north to the northernmost islands of the West Indian Archipelago—the early explorers found the natives piously attributing their knowledge of the arts of life to a venerable and benevolent old man whom they called "Our Ancestor," Tamu, or ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... appears that the islands on the west of Shark's Bay abound in a concretional calcareous rock of very recent formation, similar to what is found on the shore in several other parts of New Holland, especially in the neighbourhood of King George's Sound; and which is abundant also on the coast of the West Indian Islands, and of the Mediterranean. Captain King's specimens of this production are from Dirk Hartog's and Rottnest Islands; and M. Peron states that the upper parts of Bernier and Dorre Islands are composed of a rock of the same ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... population has been infiltrated in some parts and transformed in others, by Spanish blood and by that of the Negroes whom they introduced, so that not one half of its population can be reckoned as of pure Indian descent. The West Indian Islands have had their population absolutely swept away since the time of the Spanish Conquest, except in a few rare instances, and African Negroes have been substituted ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... of which a few are white), a West Indian French possession, one of the Lesser Antilles; has a much-indented precipitous coast; a mountain range in the centre is densely wooded; the plains are fertile, and produce sugar, coffee, and cotton, which with fruit are the exports; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Dutch but 146, the Hamburgers themselves 157. A curious and suggestive comparison is afforded by the same port in 1769. From the extensive, populous, and fruitful country of France, the entrepot of the richest West Indian colony, Santo Domingo, there entered Hamburg 203 ships, of which not one was French; whereas from Great Britain there came a slightly larger total, 216, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... make preparations for war. The House returned an address of thanks, and passed a vote of credit. During the recess, the old animosity of both nations was inflamed by a series of disastrous events. An English force was cut off in America and several French merchantmen were taken in the West Indian seas. It was plain that an appeal to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... shifting his umbrella for a moment while he hurriedly draws the antique bottle from his pocket. "You're nervous to-night, J. MCLAUGHLIN, and need a little of the venerable JAMES AKER'S West Indian Restorative.—I'll try it first to make sure that ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... accustomed. His long calls were devoted to watching Angelique's character; for his prudence, happily, had made itself heard again in the day after their first meeting. He always found her seated at a little table of some West Indian wood, and engaged in marking the linen of her trousseau. Angelique never spoke first on the subject of religion. If the young lawyer amused himself with fingering the handsome rosary that she kept ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac |
