Predominant, and everywhere in evidence, are the two items inseparably associated with St. Thomas,—jipijapa hats and bay-rum,—although I understand that since my last visit to the island the Volstead law has shown its effects even on bay-rum. But formerly—at any rate, until its acquisition by Uncle Samuel—St. Thomas was more famous for its bay-rum than for anything else; bay-rum and St. Thomas were synonymous around the world. Charlotte Amalie reeked of bay-rum: every ragged negro one met upon the streets besought one to purchase it, and from mysterious pockets or other receptacles produced a bottle or two; every shop was filled with it, and the bumboats that flocked about every incoming and departing ship were laden with it. And, strangely enough, very little bay-rum is or was made in St. Thomas. To be sure, it was adulterated, bottled, and labeled there, but the oil itself, the distilled extract of the aromatic bay-tree, was largely produced in St. John. Not one person in a million has ever heard of St. John, perhaps the most charming island of the Virgins, and yet it is really the home of the bay-rum which made St. Thomas famous. Such are fate and the effects of publicity; and as the St. Johnians ultimately reaped a goodly portion of the profits, I do not suppose they ever complained. If the visitor to St. Thomas could not be cajoled or nagged into purchasing bay-rum, then the islanders at once pressed upon him their next most famous commodity, the jipijapa or Panama hats. Somehow the visiting public was imbued with the idea that Panama hats could be purchased more cheaply in St. Thomas than elsewhere, and despite the fact that very few of the St. Thomas head-coverings ever saw the Isthmus of Panama, and still fewer ever were made in far-off Ecuador (the home of the bona-fide Panama), tourists, seamen, and other visitors to St. Thomas invariably stocked up. It made no difference, apparently, whether the hats were made in the neighboring Virgins or in Porto Rico; as long as they were bought in St. Thomas the purchasers reasoned that they must be genuine and cheap. Even the braided paper affairs made by the Japanese were often passed off on the unsuspecting and gullible tourists as real Panamas—whatever that may mean. Of course, St. Thomas being formerly under Danish rule and a free port, many articles which were subject to high duties in the United States were to be had in the island at bargain prices, but Monte Cristi Panama hats were not among them.