Its people, a marvelous potpourri of nationalities, of necessity have become remarkable linguists, with a smattering of virtually every civilized tongue, but they are neither picturesque nor interesting. On such a cruise as ours, however, this Virgin Island possession of Uncle Sam’s could not well be passed by, although, truth to tell, its piratical associations are somewhat meager and of questionable authenticity. I had seen this famed source of bay-rum under both Danish and American rule, in rain and in shine, in war and in peace; in prosperity with a forest of masts in its snug harbor, and, again, devastated by hurricanes, its shores strewn with tangled wrecks of countless vessels. But never before had St. Thomas appeared to me just as it did when, passing Sail Rock in the lee of the land, we entered the harbor and dropped the Vigilant’s anchor before Charlotte Amalie. I was looking at it now from a new point of view. I was blind to the great coaling-piers, to the gaunt dry-dock, to the fact that gray-painted cruisers and big liners rode upon the glassy surface of the harbor, that the Stars and Stripes flew from the mastheads and flagstaffs, that motor-cars scurried along the waterfront street. I was trying to visualize St. Thomas as it had been two centuries and more before, when ships with lateen yards, high poops, and wall-sided hulls pierced with cannon ports had swung to anchor before the town; when roistering crowds of fierce-whiskered, besashed sea-rovers with cutlasses at their belts and bandanas on their heads had swaggered through the steep and crooked streets; when the little pink “Christian’s” fort beside the quay had been looked upon as a real fortification, and the Danes had not been above receiving the corsairs with open arms. It is not a difficult matter to imagine Charlotte Amalie’s streets filled with buccaneers, for after a few encounters with boatmen, beggars, guides, and gamins the average visitor will be convinced that the pirates still haunt the place in spirit if not in body. Maybe the freebooters’ traits have been passed down in their blood that flows to some extent in the veins of a large proportion of the Virgin Islanders; but, however that may be, the present inhabitants of St. Thomas know little and care less about piratical history or relics. And an investigation of the contents of the shops in Charlotte Amalie will lead one to think that much of the buccaneers’ loot still remains in stock after a lapse of two centuries or more. Such juxtaposition of odds and ends from all quarters of the world, it would be hard to duplicate in any other port upon the planet.