But, to return to the West Indies, every nation is preparing to develop or establish in these regions harbours and coaling-stations and other facilities for its trade. For example, a Danish company proposes to establish connection between Copenhagen and San Francisco through the island of St. Thomas, one of the Virgin group. At St. Thomas, by the way, is shown the castle of Edward Teach, or "Blackbeard," the very beau ideal of a skull and crossbones pirate who, according to "Tom Cringle's Log," wore a beard in three plaits a foot long, and a full-dress purple velvet coat, under which bristled many pistols and two naked daggers over eighteen inches long, and who had generally a lighted match in his cocked hat with which he lit his pipe or fired a cannon, as the occasion demanded. "One of his favourite amusements when he got half-slewed was to adjourn to the hold with his compotators, and, kindling some brimstone matches, to dance and roar as if he had been the devil himself, until his allies were nearly suffocated. At another time he would blow out the candles in the cabin and blaze away with his loaded pistols at random right and left.... He was kind to his fourteen wives as long as he was sober, and never murdered above three of them." This very improper, but picturesque, gentleman was run down at last by H.M. frigates the _Lime_ and the _Pearl_ to a creek of North Carolina, where, with thirty men in an eight-gun schooner, he made a desperate fight for life, killing and wounding more than the number of his own crew, and dying where he fell, faint with the loss of blood, overcome by superior numbers alone. Whether "Blackbeard" ever inhabited the castle at St. Thomas may be questioned, but the island ought to benefit from the canal, as it lies right across the main entrance to the Caribbean from the Atlantic.