head-quarters in the Windward group, is little over one hundred miles from Barbados, the English head-quarters; but while you may sail from Barbados to Martinique in twelve hours, you will not beat back in less than three or four days. The Spaniards, as you know, were the first in the West Indies, but they troubled themselves little about the Windward islets, occupying by preference the great islands of Porto Rico, St Domingo, Cuba and Jamaica. We and the French, however, began at much the same time to occupy the islets to windward, which are all of about the size of the Isle of Wight, and we did a good deal of petty squabbling over them. These little places very soon became enormously rich. Sugar, indigo and spices, produced by servile labour, brought in enormous profits; while incidentally the contract for providing the Spanish islands with slaves--known as the Assiento--which we held for a great many years, was highly lucrative. Even in the reign of Charles II a Jamaican planter with an income of £12,000 a year--worth say £50,000 in these days--was not considered extraordinarily wealthy; and for nearly two centuries the West Indian was the most powerful mercantile interest in the British islands. With aboriginal inhabitants, or Caribs, we never had any very serious trouble, for they were few in the islands which we occupied; and in fact though, when incited by our European enemies, they gave occasional annoyance, they were never the subject of any serious military expedition until 1772, when a hybrid race, bred of yellow Carib and African negro, both brave and vigorous, became rebellious in St Vincent. There were only fifteen hundred of them, men, women, and children; but it took three thousand soldiers and marines, backed by two or three ships of war, five entire months to force them to submission, so formidable were the difficulties of feeding the troops in the thick forest and deep ravines of the interior. Few horses and mules were bred in the Windward islands, so that all the supplies were carried on the heads of negroes. Had the Caribs, therefore, been a really formidable fighting race, it would have taken us long to conquer the West Indies. As things were, we imported the negroes, who bred fast and soon outnumbered the aborigines; and thus we either compelled the Caribs to move, or agreed to let them have some patch of territory for their own. Of course the slaves were not quite an element of safety, and the whole of the West Indies lived in constant dread of a servile war. Hence a little garrison was generally kept by every nation in every island; and at least one fort was erected, as a rule, for defence of the capital and its harbour against both foreign and domestic enemies, while smaller works covered less important towns.