Barbadoes, the most windward of the group, is a densely populated island only twenty-one miles long. It is an important place and does a good trade in sugar. The West Indian Imperial Department of Agriculture has its headquarters in Bridgetown, the Barbadian capital, and the climate of the island is most salubrious. Barbadoes has been under the unbroken rule of the British for three centuries. Its history, in common with most West Indian histories, opens with long chapters containing the records of great prosperity, of a little island overflowing with riches; of millionaire planters, West Indian luxury, sumptuous mansions filled with gold and silver plate, rare carvings, European art treasures, and the choicest wines. Until very recently Barbadoes was the central market of all the West Indian islands. It was the shipping centre of the West. All the wealth of the Indies had to be landed on the Barbadian quays for transhipment to England, and much of the dust of the wealth remained. Sugar plantations flourished in the island; the planters had no grievances. Even when the decree of emancipation came, and all the slaves were freed, Barbadoes did not suffer. The country was too small to allow any of the freed negroes to cultivate food-plots on their own account; every acre of the island was tenanted and firmly held. So there was no industrial upheaval. The negro had to work or starve, and naturally he chose the former alternative. The prosperity of the planters continued, and the blacks easily settled down to their new condition of free labour. But the introduction of bounty-fed beet sugar completely altered the [Illustration: ROSEAU, THE CAPITAL OF DOMINICA] story. Ruin swept over the island like a tainted wind. The planters, always improvident, fell one by one, and Barbadoes sank to the bankrupt condition of Jamaica. Nowadays it has recovered somewhat; the introduction of efficient machinery and modern methods of cultivation have resuscitated the industry to some extent. But even to-day Barbadoes does not present the gilded appearance of sumptuous wealth that it must have had less than a century back. Barbadoes is an island of coral formation, and its dusty roads are always of a blinding whiteness. Some of the buildings in and about Bridgetown are remarkably handsome, and, as in Kingston, Jamaica, a tramway system connects the capital with its suburbs. Seen from the sea Barbadoes presents a remarkably flat appearance; there are no great mountains or wooded heights in this little isle of rest. One sees nothing but a flat stretch of luxuriant greenery dotted with white hamlets, and streaked with snow-white roads. The harbour of the capital is always crowded with shipping, the quays and dockyards are filled with merchandise, and among the wharf sheds a brilliant crowd of natives cheerfully assumes an air of indolent exertion.