"West Indian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their charts, their Romances, and alas! their Tragedies; and now, at last, I was about to compare books with facts, and judge for myself of the reported wonders of the Earthly Paradise. We could scarce believe the evidence of our own senses when they told us that we were surely on board a West Indian steamer, and could by no possibility get off it again, save into the ocean, or on the farther side of the ocean; and it was not till the morning of the second day, the 3d of December, that we began to be thoroughly aware that we were on the ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... in high latitudes. On the Mediterranean station, or on that of North America, there is such a mixture of severe and mild weather, that a larger stock is necessary than when the ship is employed exclusively in a cold, or in a hot climate. On the Indian, South American, and West Indian stations, which lie almost entirely between the tropics, woollen clothing gradually disappears, and the men are apt to suffer a good deal on returning to colder regions; it being hardly to be expected that folks of such improvident habits ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... armies of one or other of the continental powers. Nor were we yet aware of our naval strength. Drake and Hawkins and the other buccaneers had not yet commenced their private war with Spain, on what was known as the Spanish Main — the waters of the West Indian Islands — and no one dreamed that the time was approaching when England would be able to hold her own against the strength of Spain ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... Enterprise, the last of whom, I may tell you, was the officer my father had described to Gordon as knowing so little of navigation that he had, after cruising out of sight of land for some months, mistaken the Mainland of Orkney for one of the West Indian Islands. ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... the trade with the 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, and the wealth that they brought with them, the value of land, and with ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... stood as the type, not only of the Linnaean genus Cactus, but also of Haworth's Mamillaria, and as such should retain the original generic name. Besides, Mamillaria was used as the generic name of an alga in 1809. Cactus mamillaris L. is the West Indian Mamillaria ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter
... (b. 1784, d. 1859) was the son of a West Indian, who married an American lady, and practiced law in Philadelphia until the Revolution; being a Tory, he then returned to England, where Leigh Hunt was born. The latter wrote many verses while yet a boy, and in 1801 his father ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the Cunard Company was followed up in 1840 and 1841 with contracts for steam mail-carriage to the West Indies and South American ports.[AD] The first (1840) went to the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, for the West Indian service, the mail subsidy fixed at two hundred and forty thousand pounds a year;[AE] the second (1841), to the Pacific Steam Navigation Company. The latter enterprise was promoted by an American,[AF] after he had failed to obtain support in his own country[AG] for ...
— Manual of Ship Subsidies • Edwin M. Bacon
... wickedness. They did not lie about in hammocks much, listening to the landward wind among the woods—the true buccaneers. To tell the truth, most of them had no particular cause to love the human species. They were often Europeans who had been sold into slavery on the West Indian plantations, where they learned lessons of cruelty by suffering it. Thus Mr. Joseph Esquemeling, our historian, was beaten, tortured, and nearly starved to death in Tortuga, "so I determined, not knowing how to get any living, to enter into the order of the pirates ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... West Indian said. "There are more than seven hundred major languages, not counting dialects, in Africa. Sooner or later, we need an official language, what is it going ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... 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 ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... island.) This structure no doubt has been 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
... writing with awe, like a man who has survived an earthquake, "together till it was very late. Notwithstanding occasional explosions of violence, we were all delighted upon the whole with Johnson. I compared him at the time to a warm West Indian climate, where you have a bright sun, quick vegetation, luxurious foliage, luscious fruits, but where the same heat sometimes produces thunder, lightning, and ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... cup, a rich perfume loaded the air with voluptuous sweetness. Through a half-open door an inner boudoir was to be seen, which must have been Delphine's; it looked like her; the prevailing hue was a soft purple, or gray; a prie-dieu, a book-shelf, and desk, of a dark West Indian wood, were just visible. There was but one picture,—a sad-eyed, beautiful Fate. It was the type of her nation. I think she worshipped it—And how apt is misfortune! to degenerate into Fate!—not that the girl had ever experienced the former, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... was right. 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 mean something higher than a perpetuation of fiscal arrangements, ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... of equal rights for all men before the law; he was in favor of a free press, a free vote, and as nearly as possible a manhood suffrage. He was in many ways far in advance of the English liberals of his day. When the question of slavery in the West Indian colonies was under discussion in Parliament, he went farther for abolition than even the professed philanthropists and emancipationists, the Clarksons and the Buxtons, were inclined to go. He was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... combined; but owing to its ice-clothed character in most parts, its inhabitants do not quite reach an aggregate of ten thousand. Iceland is nearly the size of our New England States, and has a population of seventy-five thousand. The Faroes contain ten thousand inhabitants, and the three West Indian islands united have a population of a little ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... completely disembarked, seemed to justify the Duke of Wellington's confidence that it could rout any American army he ever heard of. Seven thousand trained British soldiers, seamen, and marines, and a thousand West Indian blacks, were assembled at Villere's plantation, with from twenty-five to thirty guns. There were regiments which had helped Wellington to win Talavera, Salamanca, and Vitoria, and within a few short months some of these same regiments were to stand at Waterloo ...
— Andrew Jackson • William Garrott Brown
... terms of a 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 him. His great ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... already in the lordships of converted daimyo. Besides, we may be sure that by the time at which the edict was issued, Iyeyasu must have heard of many matters likely to give him a most evil opinion of Roman Catholicism:—the story of the Spanish conquests in America, and the extermination of the West Indian races; the story of the persecutions in the Netherlands, and of the work of the Inquisition elsewhere; the story of the attempt of Philip II to conquer England, and of the loss of the two great [313] Armadas. The edict was issued in 1614, and Iyeyasu had found opportunity to inform ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... the province is Vera Cruz; a sea-port, the residence of the governor, and the centre of the Spanish West Indian and American commerce. This city is beautifully and regularly built; but on an arid plain, destitute of water, and covered with hills of moving sand, that are formed by the north winds, which blow; with impetuosity, every ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... allowed to transfer our Lord's great parable from moral to intellectual matters) to Life; to the living and permanent knowledge of living things and of the laws of their existence. Humbling, truly, to one who looks back to the summer of 1754, when good Mr. Ellis, the wise and benevolent West Indian merchant, read before the Royal Society his paper proving the animal nature of corals, and followed it up the year after by that "Essay toward a Natural History of the Corallines, and other like Marine Productions of the British Coasts," which forms the groundwork of all our knowledge ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... twenty years Spain struggled vainly with the West Indian problem. Four large islands and forty small ones, peopled by barbarians, were beyond the range of Spanish experience in the art of government. Grants of land were made, with the condition that the holder should ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... 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 ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... an amateur such as I am has certain advantages over sailboating. A motor-boatist—even the most reckless kind—knows enough to stay ashore when a West Indian hurricane is romping along the coast, playfully chasing its own tail like a young puppy; but that kind of a situation is just pie ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... formidable power in the world, dictated terms of peace to the United Provinces, avenged the common injuries of Christendom on the pirates of Barbary, vanquished the Spaniards by land and sea, seized one of the finest West Indian islands, and acquired on the Flemish coast a fortress which consoled the national pride for the loss of Calais. She was supreme on the ocean. She was the head of the Protestant interest. All the reformed Churches scattered over Roman Catholic kingdoms acknowledged ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... a young West Indian, tall and delicately formed, with a clear olive complexion, languishing dark hazel eyes and dark, bright chestnut hair and beard. In temperament he was ardent as his clime. In character, indolent, careless and self-indulgent. In condition he was the bachelor ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... seventeen or eighteen with wonder. That Delia had read nothing—knew nothing—had neither thoughts or principles. She was her father's spoilt child and darling; delighting in the luxury that surrounded his West Indian Governorship; courted and flattered by the few English of the colonial capital, and by the members of her father's staff; with servants for every possible need or whim; living her life mostly in the ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Netherlands did not feel the blow which was inflicted on the Italian republics. The Portuguese established their mart in Brabant, and the spices of Calicut were displayed for sale in the markets of Antwerp. Hither poured the West Indian merchandise, with which the indolent pride of Spain repaid the industry of the Netherlands. The East Indian market attracted the most celebrated commercial houses from Florence, Lucca, and Genoa; and the Fuggers and Welsers from Augsburg. Here the Hanse towns brought the wares of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... squires were interested in Mr. Grenville's budget, notably the West Indian sugar planters, virtually and actually represented in the House of Commons and voting there this day. Many of them were rich men no doubt; but sugar planting, they would assure you in confidence, was not what it had been; and if they were well off after a fashion, they might have been much better ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... 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 spoken. Quinnapin is represented as a "young, ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... to the captain, what the old man said to him, and what both said to the Board, and having finished off that affair they will cheerfully turn to discussing whether Bill Stevens sank his barge outside the West Indian No.2 by ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... the landlord and the profit of the farmer. He is apt to denominate, however, his whole gain, profit, and thus confounds rent with profit, at least in common language. The greater part of our North American and West Indian planters are in this situation. They farm, the greater part of them, their own estates: and accordingly we seldom hear of the rent of a plantation, but frequently ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... highest order, has given him an amount of heart and enthusiasm to which we are strangers. He is warm and ardent in his attachments, fierce in his resentfulness, terrible in his revenge. The black troops of our West Indian colonies, when let loose, fight with more fury and bloodthirstiness than those of any white race. This temperament is carried into religion, and nowhere on earth does our Lord find a more loving and zealous disciple than in the ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... with us, and as he had never seen Carlyle he was glad to go down with us to tea at Chelsea. Carlyle had read and agreed with the West Indian book, and the two got on very well together; both Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle liking Anthony, and I suppose it was reciprocal, though I did not see him afterwards to hear what he thought. He had to run away to ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... 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 ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... reports from the Secretary of the Navy and the Board of Commissioners will be exhibited to the view of Congress the execution of the laws relating to that department of the public service. The repression of piracy in the West Indian and in the Grecian seas has been effectually maintained, with scarcely any exception. During the war between the Governments of Buenos Ayres and of Brazil frequent collisions between the belligerent acts of power and the rights of neutral commerce occurred. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... 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, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... table-cloth was removed, he proposed calling for some punch, which was readily agreed to; he seemed at first inclined to make it himself, but afterwards changed his mind, and left that province to the waiter, telling him to have it pure West Indian, or he could not ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... crowd's fervour, and the discovery quickened and adorned the memory of the few great moments of his life. Thus had he felt when he resolved to take orders, thus, although in a less degree, because he had been doubtful and afraid, had he felt when he heard the Macedonian cry from this West Indian island. He had swayed the crowd also as he had always believed that he could sway crowds if only the spirit would burn in him brightly enough; he had no doubt that he could sway them again, govern ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... many a good day's work with the hammer and adze, are half covered by the delicate lace ruffles at his wrists. On a table lies his silver-hilted sword, and in a corner of the room stands his gold-headed cane, made of a beautifully polished West Indian wood. ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... single soldier had set foot on the transport ships which had been lying for weeks in the harbors of Havana and Tampa, the Japanese news bureaus in Kingston (Jamaica) and Havana had been fully informed as to where the blow was to fall, partly by West Indian half-breed spies and partly by the obliging American press. One regiment of cavalry had already arrived at Corpus Christi from Tampa on July 30th, and the Cuban troops were ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... father ended his mis-spent days in the West Indian island, the widow took her poverty and her fledgelings back to France, where Francoise was placed under the charge of a Madame de Villette, to pick up such education as she could in exchange for such menial work as looking ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... valuable aid from my uncle, Sir Alexander Cochrane, who was then in command of the West Indian station, and things looked much brighter for the cause of independence. But unfortunately a few months later Pitt died, the Whigs came into power, and as usual a feeble policy succeeded a strong one, and all aid was withdrawn from Miranda. The result was that, for a time, ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... Princeton, New Jersey. At the age of fourteen he went to sea in the merchant service, and was in command of a trading schooner at an early age. The American trading vessels of that period were supposed to be excluded by the navigation laws from commerce with the British West Indian Islands, though with the concealed or very slightly disguised assistance of the planters, they engaged in a good deal of contraband commerce. The war between France and Great Britain tended further to make the carrying trade of neutrals difficult. Bainbridge had therefore to expect, and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... can be spent on the deck of a splendid steamer, as it cleaves its way through a sapphire tropical sea, bound for some lovely West Indian islet; with a good cigar and the dearest companion in the world, watching the dolphins and the flying-fish, and mildly interesting one's self in one's fellow-passengers, the captain, the crew. And then, the hour spent and the cigar smoked ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... other quarters of the world; but as far as I 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 degree on the lapse of time, and as during changes of ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... be his soul, unsympathetic his nature who can see the forests and mountains of Luzon, Queen of the Eastern Isles, fade away into dim violet outlines on the fast receding horizon without some pang of longing regret. Not the Aegean, not the West Indian, not the Samoan, not any rival in manifold beauties of earth, sea and sky the Philippine Archipelago. Pity that for the Philippines no word limner of note exists. The chiefest, the almost exceptional spell of the Philippines, is situated, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... to 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 education ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... flourish in the bosom of civilization. They even thought of extending the system, by opening the slave trade and enlarging the boundaries of their projected empire, Mexico and Central America, Cuba and St. Domingo, with the whole West Indian group of islands, awaited the consolidation of their power, and stood ready to swell the glory ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... they were 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 as ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... opportunities. The whole 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 fossil echinoderms, ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... of January when he dated his next letter. Vawdrey had sent him fifty pounds; this, however, was to include the cost of his return to England. 'See, then, what I have decided. I shall make a hurried tour through the West Indian Islands, then cross to the States, and travel by land to New York or Boston, seeing all I can afford to on the way. If I have to come home as a steerage passenger, never mind; that, too, will be valuable experience.' There followed ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... chart, 1500, Cuba is fairly drawn, with the sea to the south dotted with islands without names. In a few years the mist surrounding [27]the new world had so far been dispelled as to disclose a quite accurate detail of the larger West Indian islands{1} and to offer a continent to the west, one that placed Cipangu still far too much to the east of the coast of Asia.{2} An island of some size off the southwest of Cuba seems to have been intended ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... sand or through the undergrowth, busy about goodness knows what. The beautiful cocoa-nut palm was plentiful, so much so that I wondered why there were no settlers to collect "copra," or dried cocoa-nut, for oil. My West Indian experience came in handy now, for I was able to climb a lofty tree in native fashion, and cut down a grand bunch of green nuts, which form one of the most refreshing and nutritious of foods, as well as a cool and delicious drink. We had no line with us, so ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... introduction is asserted to have been due to the tenacity of purpose of a Dr. Gibbon, whose 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, and the task completed; the result was ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... old Admiral was not mistaken in his prophecy. A furious West Indian hurricane broke on the last day of June; but his poor little ships, instead of lying safe in the shelter of San Domingo harbor, were exposed to all the ravages of the storm. Why? Because Ovando had refused ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... of the king of Angola, and general of the forces. He was decoyed by Captain Driver aboard his ship; his suite of twenty men were made drunk with rum; the ship weighed anchor; and the prince, with all his men, were sold as slaves in one of the West Indian Islands. Here Oroonoko met Imoin'da (3 syl.), his wife, from whom he had been separated, and whom he thought was dead. He headed a rising of the slaves, and the lieutenant-governor tried to seduce Imoinda. The result was that Imoinda killed herself, and Oroonoko ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... casks out of a West Indiaman. One of the men said, "Come on, young master; give us a hand on the bar here." So I put my hands on to the bar and pushed my best, walking beside him till my uncle called me away. There were many ships there at the time, all a West Indian convoy, and it was fine to see their great figureheads, and the brass cannon at the ports, and to hear the men singing out aloft as they shifted spars and bent and unbent sails. They were all very lofty ships, built for speed; all were beautifully ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... for Weymouth, took strong exception to compulsory apprenticeship, as perpetuating the 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 Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... strain of twenty years of war had saddled Great Britain with a national debt of eight hundred million pounds. Of material gain there was little to show but the acquisition of Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch; of the former French colony of Mauritius, and of a few West Indian islands. The continued possession of the Rock of Gibraltar, and of Malta, the old stronghold of the Knights of Malta, together with the British protectorate over the Ionic Isles, assured to England her commanding position in the Mediterranean. At home the pressure of ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... 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 involved you in perplexities ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Ritualistic organist, 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
... 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
... injuring and devastating the commerce which we are now engaged in rebuilding. We labored especially under this disadvantage, that European steam vessels employed by our enemies found friendly shelter, protection, and supplies in West Indian ports, while our naval operations were necessarily carried on from our own distant shores. There was then a universal feeling of the want of an advanced naval outpost between the Atlantic coast and Europe. The duty of obtaining such an outpost peacefully and lawfully, while neither ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... do nothing else than 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, naturally, could not help thinking of her young brother, ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... great dissatisfaction with 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 ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... year; but at a little distance or in a discreet light, it was no courtier's flattery to say that she might very well have passed for thirty. Her tall, elegant figure was girlish in its supple slimness, and she had an easy and natural grace in every movement, which she inherited with her tropical West Indian blood. Her features were delicate, and I have heard that in her youth she was strikingly beautiful; but, like most Creole women, she had become passee in early middle age. She had made a brave fight, however—with art as her ally—against the attacks of time, ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... gangs, and bestowed on persons who enjoyed favour at court. The conditions of the gift were that the convicts should be carried beyond sea as slaves, that they should not be emancipated for ten years, and that the place of their banishment should be some West Indian island. This last article was studiously framed for the purpose of aggravating the misery of the exiles. In New England or New Jersey they would have found a population kindly disposed to them and a climate not unfavourable to their health and vigour. It was therefore determined ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... [stopping and turning on him]. I know nothing more than I have seen in her eye. She will break it off. Take my advice: marry a West Indian negress: they make excellent wives. I was married to one myself ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... the final accomplishment of one of the noblest acts of England—the abolition of West Indian slavery. The battle was commenced by man, and fought manfully; but without your aid he could not have conquered as he did. Your generous voices cheered him on, and he became invincible. And so will it ever be in Great Britain. O! give but the same aid now, and ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers
... and left you on my hands. I was about sending you off again, when news came that your father had died on his voyage home from Canton, and been buried in the deep: so here you stayed. Brother—spendthrift, shiftless, improvident—marries a West Indian papist; turns one; dies with his wife, or, at least, soon after her leaving another ne'er-do-weel on my hands. I wish you'd all gone to purgatory together. To be shut up in my old days with two wild papists is abominable!" muttered the old man, slamming the ledgers together, until every thing on ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... impossible to place before the public, in a correct point of view, the whole appearance and state of steamers employed in the West Indian mail service, as seen last year—when the whole extent of their voyages was travelled over in more than one of them:—imagine a small ill-contrived boat, an old 10-gun brig, as the Carron is, for example, ...
— A General Plan for a Mail Communication by Steam, Between Great Britain and the Eastern and Western Parts of the World • James MacQueen
... the West Indian acquitted herself with great propriety; for although she did not perform so well as the greater part of the company, yet she was never awkward; and when at a loss for the figure, she listened with modesty, and ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... power of Spain being completely broken, under which she abandoned all claims of sovereignty, not only over the island of Cuba, the original cause of war, but over various other islands in the Philippine, as well as in the West Indian, archipelagoes. These islands, in all said to be some 1,200 to 1,500 in number, are moreover not only inhabited by both natives and foreigners to the estimated number of ten to twelve million of souls, but they contain large cities and communities ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams
... 300 species, mostly Mexican, with a few Brazilian and West Indian, is called nipple cactus, and consists of globular or cylindrical succulent plants, whose surface instead of being cut up into ridges with alternate furrows, as in Melocactus, is broken up into teat-like cylindrical or angular tubercles, spirally arranged, and terminating in a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... 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 ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... laws which has been established for the management of our American and West Indian colonies, the interest of the home consumer has been sacrificed to that of the producer, with a more extravagant profusion than in all our other commercial regulations. A great empire has been established for the sole purpose of raising up a nation of customers, who should ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... 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 ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... the general rule. His gallantry and ardent devotion to his profession endeared him to the service, and some merry wags of the crew, in an idle humour, dubbed him "Old Grogham." Whilst in command of the West Indian station, and at the height of his popularity on account of his reduction of Porto Bello with six men-of-war only, he introduced the use of rum and water by the ship's company. When served out, the new beverage proved most palatable, and speedily grew into such favour, that it became ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various
... swung wide 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
... sword up to the very walls of the English fort at Cape Coast. Sometimes the English confined themselves to remonstrance, sometimes fought, not always successfully, as upon one occasion Sir Charles Macarthy, the governor, with a West Indian regiment was utterly defeated, the governor himself and all his white officers, except ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... slavery again came up before Parliament. This time the question was as to the working of the system of negro apprenticeship, which had taken the place of slavery. It was asserted that the system was only slavery under another name. He warmly and ably defended again the West Indian planters. He pleaded that many of the planters were humane men, and defended also the honor of his relatives connected with the traffic so much denounced, when it was assailed. He contended that while the evils of the system had been exaggerated, all ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... proportions of a forest tree. The port rose perhaps to its greatest height of prosperity in the days of the fourth George, when the famous Falmouth packets—ten-gun brigs officered by naval men—carried the mails to various Mediterranean ports, and to the North American and West Indian stations. A well preserved relic of these good old days may be seen at Swanpool, where, in a cottage built by Commander Bull, may be observed a chiselled relief of the old "Marlborough" packet at the top angle of the facade. As a port Falmouth has not kept pace ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... to himself. "But the statue is thickly gilt, and the marble underneath may be made to glow without a West Indian sun. So it was little Edie, then. He hasn't bad taste. The dark horse was not dangerous after all, and was not ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... 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. But those vast and successful invasions of society ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... 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 deprive a man of his necessary sexual intercourse, even if they were soon to roast him and pick his ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... her heart. Poor little girl! she was 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 rehearsing magnanimous letters ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... between Spaniard and Hollander and Englishman, before twenty years were over the most valuable colonies of the Indies and the Cape of Good Hope and Ceylon and those along the coast of China and even Japan were in Protestant hands. In 1621 a West Indian Company was founded which conquered Brazil and in North America built a fortress called Nieuw Amsterdam at the mouth of the river which Henry Hudson had discovered in ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... obligations—and indeed privileges—of Imperial defence, took steps to establish a Royal Naval Reserve. From 1900 a number of men volunteered as reservists, and entered for six months' training on one of the vessels of the North American and West Indian squadron. In 1902 a training ship, H.M.S. Calypso, was stationed in St. John's harbour, where the 600 men—the number proposed—might duly complete their training. Before the war the Naval Reserve establishment ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... old man had taken up his quarters for the past fortnight, and had spent his time down at the docks, where the Sirius was being overhauled in her rigging, and was getting in her stores and ammunition ready for her start to the West Indian station ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... 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
... nine. This was an acknowledgment of American independence, and the first salute ever paid by a foreign naval power to the Stars and Stripes. It is true that a salute had been given to the American brig, the Andrea Doria, before this, by the Governor of one of the West Indian Islands; but a salute which his Government immediately disowned and for which he was called home is rather an individual than a national salute. Then, too, there is no proof that the flag flown by the Andrea Doria ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... 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. Pigeon ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... artful young scholards left a letter to his ma on his table, open for everybody to see, talking some gammon about a West Indian island, and saying you was going to lay hold of the Long Stork, to get your hands in. I can tell you you have got your hands in, my beauties. There's a cart-load of birches been ordered for you at the ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... as do their respective systems of colonial government. Whether the devil himself possesses ingenuity in inflicting suffering, superior to that displayed by the Spanish conquerors and their immediate followers, has never been demonstrated. The gentle, unresisting natives of the West Indian Islands, whose delicate constitutions incapacitated them to bear labours their masters exacted of them, were their first victims. The descriptions penned as of the cruelties practised on these harmless creatures dispense me from the ungrateful task of attempting ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... to have been originally a baker, from his having undertaken the task of watching the cakes in the neat-herd's oven; and Edward the Black Prince was probably a West Indian, who found his way to our hospitable shores ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... diverted with the ceremonies of this festal day. He had lost a great part of his West Indian pride during his residence with Mr Barlow, and had contracted many acquaintances among the families of the poor. After the example of Mr Barlow, he condescended to go about from one to the other, and make inquiries about their families; nor was he a little gratified with the extreme ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... yoke of oppressive despotisms. Their growing sense of responsibility towards alien races which they themselves held in subjection was manifested most conspicuously in the generous movement which resulted in the abolition of slavery in our West Indian Colonies. It could not fail to be extended also to India. Under Lord Hastings British dominion had again rapidly expanded between 1813 and 1823, when he left it firmly established from the extreme south to the ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... as it seemed, with rifle gripped and pack hunched, and steel hat clattering like a tinker's kettle, came down the inclined plank and lurched ashore. They were English lads from every country; Scots, Irish, Welsh, of every regiment; Australians, New-Zealanders, South Africans, Canadians, West Indian negroes of the Garrison Artillery; Sikhs, Pathans, and Dogras of the Indian Cavalry. Some of them had been sick and there was a greenish pallor on their faces. Most of them were deeply tanned. Many of them stepped on the quayside of France ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... longer period. I hope there is nothing fanciful in all this. It is certain that, in England, and in all moderate climates, we are too slightly reminded of nature or the focus of nature. Great heats, or great colds (and in Canada there are both), or great hurricanes, as in the West Indian latitudes, recall us continually to the sense of a powerful presence, investing our paths on every side; whereas, in England, it is possible to forget that we live amongst greater agencies than those ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... West Indian Islands or African Settlements which form part of any general Government, every Bill or Draft Ordinance must be submitted to the Governor-in-Chief before it receives the assent of the Lieutenant-Governor or ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... no lack of grit in this accomplished, fresh-minded, and lovable man. He had the tough fibre of his race; only it was the wrongs of others that called out its tenacity, not his own. While holding an appointment on his mother's West Indian estate, he braved the fierce resentment of the whole colony by teaching a negro-boy to read; and finally incurred disinheritance rather than draw a livelihood from slave-labour. This Shelleyan act involved for him ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... he was encouraged to follow up his single cargo with many others larger and more profitable. During the war of 1812 business was somewhat interrupted by the English cruisers, which were ever on the alert for prizes in the West Indian waters, but, after peace was declared, his trade increased rapidly. He supplied ice to Charleston and New Orleans also, those cities at first requiring but a ship-load each per annum, although the demand increased so rapidly that ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... 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
... brothers and sisters in the isles of the sea. That act of the British Parliament, and he might add in this case with peculiar emphasis, of the British nation, passed on the 12th day of August, 1833, to take effect on the first day of August, 1834, and which enfranchised 800,000 West Indian slaves, was an event sublime in its nature, comprehensive and mighty in its immediate influences and remote consequences, precious beyond expression to the cause of freedom, and encouraging beyond the measure of any government on earth to the hearts of all enlightened ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. Self-emancipation even in the West Indian provinces of the fancy and imagination—what Wilberforce is there to bring that about? Think, also, of the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions against the last day, not to betray too green an interest in their fates! As if you could kill time ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... Among them were White's daughter, Eleanor Dare, and her child. The time was inopportune. An embargo had been laid on all shipping, in expectation of the Spanish invasion. By Ralegh's influence it was raised in favour of a couple of merchantmen, equipped for a West Indian voyage, on condition that they transported men and necessaries to Virginia. They broke the compact. Though they embarked White, they took no colonists. They chased Spanish ships, fought with men-of-war from Rochelle, and came ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing |
