Let us pass next to the West Indies. Where islands are concerned, of course naval superiority is essential to every successful campaign, otherwise you cannot bring either troops or stores to the scene of action. The Antilles are for the most part of volcanic formation, mountainous, if a height of three to four thousand feet may be said to make a mountain, rugged, and in the majority of cases covered with forest, cultivation generally being confined to the lower hills and valleys. Situated between the 10th and 23rd degrees of North latitude, they lie well within the Tropic of Cancer; and the climate is consequently such that white men cannot breed and thrive there. Roads in the great majority of the islands are few, and such as there are frequently traverse ground so steep that they are paved and not macadamised, lest the surface should be washed away by the heavy tropical rains. By far the greater number of such roads (I except the island of Barbados) are mere tracks, narrow, rough and unfit for vehicles. Bridges are even fewer than roads, though the islands with which we are chiefly concerned are furrowed by torrents, which have cut deep ravines and valleys in their rush from the mountains down to the sea. Hence what with forests, streams, hills and valleys as steep as those of the Highlands, it is not easy to move about most of the islands. All labour was formerly done by negro slaves imported from West Africa, whose descendants--now for three generations free--still form the mass of the population. These negroes to a certain extent cultivate provision-grounds for themselves; but the islands are none of them self-supporting in the matter of food; and for full two centuries they have been supplied with flour, maize, salt fish and salt pork from America. Strategically they fall into two groups: the Windward, comprising the chain of islets which runs for some six hundred miles north and westward from Trinidad to St Thomas; and the Leeward, consisting of the far larger islands of Porto Rico, St Domingo, Jamaica and Cuba, which run nearly due west from St Thomas. Everything in the West Indies is windward or leeward, that is to say is considered in respect of its situation towards the south-easterly trade-wind, which in the days of sailing ships was a very important matter. Say, for instance, that the General in Jamaica asked for reinforcements from the General at Barbados, the most leewardly from the most windwardly of our possessions; the General in Barbados had to think twice before sending them because, though they would probably reach Jamaica in a week, they could not be sure of beating back in three months. In fact no captain in old days would have attempted such a thing, for it would have been quite as speedy and far Less exhausting to sail back to England by a circuitous course and make a fresh start for Barbados from thence. So too between any two islands the same question of windward and Leeward was equally cogent. Martinique, the French