holds and crowded quarter-decks, to return from a six months’ voyage in the Indies crowded with treasure and glory, we count the islands barren. We forget that West Indian wealth was invested in Britain’s greatness years before we had an empire. We forget that Britain’s navy was founded by men who were trained to war and seamanship among those islands of the West. More than once have these islands seen the pride and glory of England hanging in the balance, and once, at least, the Indies knew before the homeland that a blow, which had threatened the very foundations of British greatness, had been hurled in vain. That was in the time of Burke and Fox and Rodney. Spain and France and Holland had combined, and in one great battle threatened to crush the power of England, and to wrest from her the supremacy of the seas. England trembled, and the popular party advocated surrender and peace. France and Spain wanted the Indies. Rodney sailed from England to uphold the power and dominion of his race. He sailed amidst the sullen silence of a people whose power he was to uphold. A few weeks after his sailing a message was despatched from Parliament commanding him not to fight. He was to strike his colours and surrender the Indies. But the message arrived too late. Rodney had already fought and won when the craven message reached him. The battle had happened off Dominica, and the flag of England remained triumphant in the Caribbean Sea. The English ships were victorious, and Rodney had saved his country against his country’s will. And since that day no one has challenged England’s supremacy in the islands of the West. The history of the West Indies is filled with chapters as strong even as this; in no corner of the world have so many brave deeds been done for “England, home, and beauty.” Stories of mighty Spanish galleons sunk by British ships of war; of pillage and bloodshed and treasure; of the battles of France and Spain and England; of the wealth of the Spanish main, intercepted among these islands, and stored in some West Indian port for convenience of British merchant adventure houses, are encountered at every step on our journey through the records of the Caribbean group. We read of buccaneers and filibusters; of Morgan, the last of the tribe, knighted and made Vice-Governor of Jamaica; of the doings of the redoubtable Kidd; of the bloodiness of Blackbeard; of the countless list of names, some high-sounding, which at last were painted in crimson splashes on the gallows slip at Port Royal headland. Port Royal itself deserves a niche in the temple of fame. The richest and the most vicious town the world ever knew; so it was before the clean ocean washed away its vice and corruption, and buried it deep in the pure water of the blue Caribbean. When Morgan knew it, when the prizes of Kidd and the others were moored alongside its treasure-laden wharves, the strip of land contained the richest city in the world.