"West Indian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... street from her shirt shop, where the red light district begins, is a bar frequented by natives, soldiers and sailors. Tourists seldom go there, for it is a bit off the beaten track. In front of the bar is a West Indian boy with a tripod and camera with a telescopic lens. He never photographs natives, and wandering tourists pass him by, but he is there every day from eight in the morning until dark. His job is to photograph everyone who shows ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... been lulled in 1662 by a formal treaty of peace, but which still lived on in petty squabbles at sea, was embittered by the cession of Bombay—a port which gave England an entry into the profitable trade with India—as well as by the establishment of a West Indian Company in London which opened a traffic with the Gold Coast of Africa, and brought back from Guinea the gold from which our first "guineas" were struck. In both countries there was a general irritation which vented itself in cries for war, and in the session of 1664 the English Parliament ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... been fifty times worse than the worst Anglo-Saxon misrule ever known. The island has been used by Spain simply as a gold-mine.[J] So far as those toiling in it are concerned, she has displayed an indifference similar to that which resulted in the destruction of her West Indian population three centuries ago. The Cubans have been taxed without representation, shot down if they remonstrated, and mocked by acts of the Cortes, granting relief which it was never intended to afford to them, but which for a time served ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... chance, they encountered Considine. He had walked up, as usual, in the morning to read Dante with her. He came through the house unannounced and entered the library where the lovers were bending with their heads close together over the map on which Gabrielle had followed the course of Radway's West Indian voyages, and, being engrossed in these tender reminiscences, they did not see him. He stood in the doorway, gazing, uncertain as to what he should say or do. In his seventeen years at Clonderriff he had got out of the way of dealing ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... Mistaken Ideas. Civil Service Reform. Perfecting of Party Organization in the Country. Jackson and the United States Bank. His Popularity. Revival of West Indian Trade. French Spoliation Claims. Paid. Our Gold and Silver Coinage. Gold Bill. Increased Circulation of ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Ursula poured out her heart. Poor little girl! she was greatly discomfited at the vanishing of her noble vision of the heroic self-devoted father, and ready on the other hand to believe him a villain, like Bertram Risingham, or 'the Pirate,' being possessed by this idea on account of his West Indian voyages. At any rate, she was determined not to be accepted or acknowledged without her mother, and was already rehearsing ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was known as a venturesome organization, as willing to send its fleet ramping out through the fog to the assistance of a distressed liner as to transport arms to West Indian or Central American revolutionists. Before Dan had commanded the Fledgling many months he had done both, and was beginning to be known up and down the coast as a captain to be called upon in emergencies verging upon the ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... pleased by this remark). Perhaps because you never asked me. (Turning more blandly to Rankin) I will tell you the story, Mr. Rankin. When Miles died, he left an estate in one of the West Indian islands. It was in charge of an agent who was a sharpish fellow, with all his wits about him. Now, sir, that man did a thing which probably could hardly be done with impunity even here in Morocco, under the most barbarous of surviving civilizations. He quite simply ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... discomfiture. Rejoicing over their victories, the followers of Morgan then planned a venture that should eclipse all that had gone before. This was no less than a descent upon Panama, the most powerful of the West Indian cities. For this undertaking, Morgan gathered around him an army of over two thousand desperadoes of all nationalities. A little village on the island of Hispaniola was chosen as the recruiting station; and thither flocked pirates, thieves, and adventurers from all parts of the world. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... them gently, till the syrup appears to have entered them. In the course of a week turn the syrup from them, heat it scalding hot, and turn it on to the tomatoes. Tomatoes preserved in this manner appear like West Indian sweetmeats. ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... to have been originally a baker, from his having undertaken the task of watching the cakes in the neat-herd's oven; and Edward the Black Prince was probably a West Indian, who found his way to our hospitable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... world; but as far as I have gone, the relation holds good. For instance, Britain is separated by a shallow channel from Europe, and the mammals are the same on both sides; and so it is with all the islands near the shores of Australia. The West Indian Islands, on the other hand, stand on a deeply submerged bank, nearly one thousand fathoms in depth, and here we find American forms, but the species and even the genera are quite distinct. As the amount of modification which ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... better the tradition of the Grecians, and ascribe the first inventions to men, yet you will rather believe that Prometheus first stroke the flints, and marvelled at the spark, than that when he first stroke the flints he expected the spark; and therefore we see the West Indian Prometheus had no intelligence with the European, because of the rareness with them of flint, that gave the first occasion. So as it should seem, that hitherto men are rather beholden to a wild goat for surgery, or to a nightingale ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... had then recently commissioned a fifty-gun ship, the Portland, and in her sailed for the West Indies, where he remained until the autumn of 1742; but the inert manner in which Spain maintained the naval contest, notwithstanding that her transmarine policy was the occasion of the quarrel, and her West Indian possessions obviously endangered, removed all chance of active service on the large scale, except in attacking her colonies; and in none of those enterprises had the Portland been ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... the lordships of converted daimyo. Besides, we may be sure that by the time at which the edict was issued, Iyeyasu must have heard of many matters likely to give him a most evil opinion of Roman Catholicism:—the story of the Spanish conquests in America, and the extermination of the West Indian races; the story of the persecutions in the Netherlands, and of the work of the Inquisition elsewhere; the story of the attempt of Philip II to conquer England, and of the loss of the two great [313] Armadas. The edict was issued in 1614, and Iyeyasu had found opportunity to inform ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... organist, shifting his umbrella for a moment while he hurriedly draws the antique bottle from his pocket. "You're nervous to-night, J. MCLAUGHLIN, and need a little of the venerable JAMES AKER'S West Indian Restorative.—I'll try it first to make sure that ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... and two stories, occupied chiefly by thriving mechanics, which has been laid out where Knox meant to have forests and parks. On the banks of the river, where he intended to have only one wharf for his own West Indian vessels and yacht, there are two wharves, with stores and a lime kiln. Little appertains to the mansion except the tomb and the old burial-ground, and the ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... other religious edifices then building, repaired the edifices belonging to the state and constructed the walls and bastions which still surround the city. He was able to ward off the attacks of corsairs, who multiplied in West Indian waters to such an extent that in 1561 the Spanish Government forbade vessels to travel to and from the new ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... enterprises of the Dutch were only less vigorous than in the East, and they were marked by the same feature of an intense concentration upon the purely commercial aspect. While the English and (still more) the French adventurers made use of the lesser West Indian islands, unoccupied by Spain, as bases for piratical attacks upon the Spanish trade, the Dutch, with a shrewd instinct, early deserted this purely destructive game for the more lucrative business ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... the close of January when he dated his next letter. Vawdrey had sent him fifty pounds; this, however, was to include the cost of his return to England. 'See, then, what I have decided. I shall make a hurried tour through the West Indian Islands, then cross to the States, and travel by land to New York or Boston, seeing all I can afford to on the way. If I have to come home as a steerage passenger, never mind; that, too, will be valuable experience.' There followed many affectionate ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... fully impressed with the vast oscillations of level which have affected the earth's crust within late periods, will not fear to speculate on the recent elevation of the Mexican platform, or, more probably, on the recent submergence of land in the West Indian Archipelago, as the cause of the present zoological separation of North and South America. The South American character of the West Indian mammals [6] seems to indicate that this archipelago was formerly united to the southern continent, and that ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... were forced to forage for themselves in the neighbouring country. At last the fleet set sail (8 Oct., 1625). Its destination proved to be Cadiz, whither it was despatched in the hope of securing West Indian treasure on its way home. The expedition, however, turned out to be as complete a failure as that under Mansfeld in ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... was born January 5, 1833, and entered the (p. 363) British Royal Navy as assistant-surgeon, November 10, 1855. He was employed on the home station, on particular service on the North American, West Indian, and West Coast of Africa stations, until June, 1863. While in Jamaica in April, 1858, with the permission of his commanding officer, Admiral Sir Hewston Stewart, Royal Navy, he volunteered, at imminent personal risk, his services on board the United States vessel-of-war Susquehanna, ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... was the Albemarle, twenty-eight guns, in which he was kept, to his great annoyance, in the North Sea for the whole winter of 1781-2, and was sent in the spring to Quebec. The Albemarle then served on the West Indian station until tidings came that the preliminaries of peace had been signed, and she returned to England, and was paid off ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... Free State have imported as labourers both West Indian negroes—principally Barbadians—and Chinamen. In both cases the mortality has been terrible—more than the white mortality, which competent authorities put down for the Congo at 77 per cent., and the experiment has therefore failed. It may ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... The West Indian Islands had an especial fascination for Froude on account of the great naval exploits of Rodney, Hood, and other British sailors. 'Kingsley's At Last had revived his interest in them; and though Kingsley had long been ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... the flowers and buds of all other kinds of pears. Wheat, which is grown over so large a portion of the world, has become adapted to special climates. Wheat imported from India and sown in good wheat soil in England produced the most meagre ears; while wheat taken from France to the West Indian Islands produced either wholly barren spikes or spikes furnished with two or three miserable seeds, while West Indian seed by its side yielded an enormous harvest. The orange was very tender when first introduced into Italy, and continued so as long as ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... famous. His character was a curious medley of incongruous features, bluff straightforwardness and crooked diplomacy, faithful affection—such as his bold schemes to help his captured comrades proved—balanced by a hard indifference that ignored the misery of the wretched negroes he sold to West Indian planters. Pluck and daring were the only qualities he showed consistently from first to last. His zeal in slave-hunting, repulsive to us, is excused by Froude on the ground that 'negro slavery in theory was an invention of philanthropy.' Labourers were a necessity for the Spanish ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... West Indian islands of volcanic origin; and three of them—St. Vincent, Martinique, and Guadaloupe—contain active volcanoes. The most remarkable is the volcano of Morne- Garou, in St. Vincent, the eruptions from which have been particularly violent. In 1812 the ashes which ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... several sticks of tobacco, two brace of very handsome pistols, a piece of bar silver, an old Spanish watch, and some other trinkets of little value and mostly of foreign make, a pair of compasses mounted with brass, and five or six curious West Indian shells. I have often wondered since why he should have carried about these shells with him in his ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... era of our liberty and independence, and muzzle the cannon which thunders its annual joyous return. They must renew the slave trade, with all its train of atrocities. They must suppress the workings of British philanthropy, seeking to meliorate the condition of the unfortunate West Indian slave. They must arrest the career of South American deliverance from thraldom. They must blow out the moral lights around us and extinguish that greatest torch of all which America presents to a benighted world—pointing the way to their rights, their liberties, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... distance or in a discreet light, it was no courtier's flattery to say that she might very well have passed for thirty. Her tall, elegant figure was girlish in its supple slimness, and she had an easy and natural grace in every movement, which she inherited with her tropical West Indian blood. Her features were delicate, and I have heard that in her youth she was strikingly beautiful; but, like most Creole women, she had become passee in early middle age. She had made a brave fight, however—with ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... BIT. A West Indian silver coin, varying from 4d. to 6d. In America it is 12-1/2 cents, and in the Spanish settlements is equal with the real, or one-eighth of a dollar. It was, in fact, Spanish money cut into bits, and ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... distance to the westward. And not only was Margarita the spot where the Spaniards had established a vastly profitable pearl-fishing industry, but it was also a kind of depot where all sorts of supplies from Old Spain for the maintenance of her West Indian possessions were landed and stored, to be drawn upon as occasion might demand. There was, therefore, the double possibility of securing a more or less rich booty of pearls, and of replenishing the stores, ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... an hour's leave, visited once more his friends of the Invincibles. He had begged a package of fine West Indian cigarettes from Sherburne, and he literally laid them at the feet of the two colonels—he found them sitting together on the grass, lean gray men who seemed to be wholly ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Its finely variegated tints were admired, but in that age the dream of El Dorado caused matters of more value to be neglected. The first that was brought to England was about 1724, a few planks having been sent to Dr. Gibbons, of London, by a brother who was a West Indian captain. The doctor was erecting a house, and gave the planks to the workmen, who rejected them as being too hard. The doctor then had a candle-box made of the wood, his cabinet-maker also complaining of the hardness of the timber. But, when finished, the box became an ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... upon our future movements. Jose Leirya was, of course, elected captain, and, for some reason that I cannot make out, I was chosen for first mate. Then for our plans. We were about in the middle of the North Atlantic, perhaps a little more than half-way to the West Indian Islands; so we determined to run there, take a ship on our way, if we could, and if not, capture one in the first port we could reach—for the galley was of little use to us for our purposes. Ah! if I had but known, if I could but have foreseen what was to happen in the ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... and sole occupation is planting, in which I have made great progress and talked very learnedly with the nurserymen, except that now and then a lettuce run to seed overturns all my botany, as I have more than once taken it for a curious West Indian flowering shrub. Then the deliberation with which trees grow, is extremely inconvenient to my natural impatience. I lament living in so barbarous an age, when we are come to so little perfection in gardening. I am persuaded that a hundred and fifty ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... slept during eighteen years, was suddenly revived by the Revolution. Different classes, impelled by different motives, concurred on this point. With merchants, eager to share in the advantages of the West Indian Trade, were joined active and aspiring politicians who wished to exhibit their abilities in a more conspicuous theatre than the Scottish Parliament House, and to collect riches from a more copious source than the Scottish treasury. The cry for union was swelled by the voices ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... introduction is asserted to have been due to the tenacity of purpose of a Dr. Gibbon, whose wife wanted a candle box, an article of common domestic use of the time. The Doctor, who had laid by in the garden of his house in King Street, Covent Garden, some planks sent to him by his brother, a West Indian captain, asked the joiner to use a part of the wood for this purpose; it was found too tough and hard for the tools of the period, but the Doctor was not to be thwarted, and insisted on harder-tempered tools being found, and the task completed; the result was the ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... and occasionally one was shot. A frequent employment was the cutting of spruce tops to make spruce beer. This innocent beverage was reputed sovereign against scurvy; and such was the fame of its virtues that a copious supply of the West Indian molasses used in concocting it was thought indispensable to every army or garrison in the wilderness. Throughout this campaign it is repeatedly mentioned in general orders, and the soldiers are promised that they shall have as much of it as ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... from pole to pole, and reappears in every race. We recognize it in the wishing-cap of Fortunatus, which is a Celtic legend; in the cornucopia of the Romans; in the goat Amalthea among the Greeks; in the wishing-cow and wishing-tree of the Hindoos; in the pumpkin-tree of the West Indian Ananzi stories; in the cow of the Servian legends, who spins yarn out of her ear; in the Sampo of the Finns; and in all those stories of cups, and glasses, and horns, and rings, and swords, seized by some bold spirit in the midst of a fairy revel, or earned by some ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... cloud masses to the right, but it was obvious that the thunderings above them were only commencing their deep and terrible pealings. In a short time they increased in violence and fury, and resembled, in fact, a West Indian hurricane more than those storms which are peculiar to our milder climates. The tempest-voice of the wind was now in dreadful accordance! with its power. Poor Kennedy, who fortunately knew every step of ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the name of a wealthy cousin of my father's—the late Allan Armadale—who possessed estates in our neighborhood, the largest and most productive in the island, and who consented to be my godfather by proxy. Mr. Armadale had never seen his West Indian property. He lived in England; and, after sending me the customary godfather's present, he held no further communication with my parents for years afterward. I was just twenty-one before we heard again from Mr. Armadale. On that occasion my mother received a letter ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... medicinal plants. Here, too, is the favorite zone of the coffee tree, which thrives best one thousand feet above sea level. The valleys and plains produce rich harvests of sugar-cane and tobacco. The amount of sugar yielded by a given area is said to be greater than in any other West Indian island. Rice, of the mountain variety and grown without flooding, nourishes almost any place and is a staple food of the laboring classes. In addition to these products cotton and maize are commonly cultivated, and yams, plantains, oranges, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... due the final accomplishment of one of the noblest acts of England—the abolition of West Indian slavery. The battle was commenced by man, and fought manfully; but without your aid he could not have conquered as he did. Your generous voices cheered him on, and he became invincible. And so will it ever be in Great Britain. O! ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers
... day of my romance, when from between the blue and white bales in Don Ramon's darkened storeroom, at Kingston, I saw the door open before the figure of an old man with the tired, long, white face, that day I am not likely to forget. I remember the chilly smell of the typical West Indian store, the indescribable smell of damp gloom, of locos, of pimento, of olive oil, of new sugar, of new rum; the glassy double sheen of Ramon's great spectacles, the piercing eyes in the mahogany face, while the tap, tap, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... blind but inhabited cubby-holes, hunting out squatters' nests of tin cans and dry-goods boxes hidden away behind the legitimate buildings, shouting questions into dilapidated ear-drums, delving into the past of every human being who fell in my way. West Indian negroes easily kept the lead of all other nationalities combined; negroes blacker than the obsidian cutlery of the Aztecs, blonde negroes with yellow hair and blue eyes whose race was betrayed only by eyelids and the dead whiteness of skin, and whom one could not set down as such after ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... to buy them out. The alienation between them and Mr. Barnes, the present master, had however much stronger grounds than these. His nephew and intended heir has stolen a match with the old man's pretty daughter, and this had never been forgiven. The young couple had gone out to the West Indian isles, where the early home of her husband had been, and where he held some government office, and there fell a victim to the climate. Old Mr. Gould had gone home to fetch his daughter and her child, but the former had died before he ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ground has been considerably cleared, and the agricultural resources of the country have been developed; three-fourths of the inhabitants can now live on the produce of the land, merely at the cost of their own labour. Commercial relations have been, established with France and the West Indian islands. The cod fishery of Newfoundland promises to become a source of immense revenue. Mines of lead, slate, and coal have been discovered near Montreal. Money, once so so scarce, has become abundant since the arrival ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... wickedness. They did not lie about in hammocks much, listening to the landward wind among the woods—the true buccaneers. To tell the truth, most of them had no particular cause to love the human species. They were often Europeans who had been sold into slavery on the West Indian plantations, where they learned lessons of cruelty by suffering it. Thus Mr. Joseph Esquemeling, our historian, was beaten, tortured, and nearly starved to death in Tortuga, "so I determined, not knowing how to get any living, to enter into the order ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... maintenance of the eight already in being. Her eldest was a boy of ten years old, a fine spirited fellow, who longed to be out in the world; but what could she do? Was there any chance of his being hereafter useful to Sir Thomas in the concerns of his West Indian property? No situation would be beneath him; or what did Sir Thomas think of Woolwich? or how could a boy be sent out to ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... were also three of my cotemporaries,—De Morgan, who had the business after decease of our principal, and whose brother is or was the famous psychological philosopher; Domville, since Sir Charles, I believe; and Gunn, a West Indian, of whom the jest was to inquire of Walters, a very nervous man, if he liked us to have a gun in chambers: all these, and there were more, were clever men and worthy, but as the tide of life flows on I ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... eloquent and statesmanlike speech of the gallant colonel—myself; then I thought I was making arrangements for setting out for my new appointment, and Sancho Panza never coveted the government of an island more than I did, though only a West Indian one; and, lastly, I saw myself the chosen diplomate on a difficult mission, and was actually engaged in the easy and agreeable occupation of outmaneuvering Talleyrand and Pozzo di Borgo, when Peter suddenly drew up at the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... means so simple. By the treaty of commerce with France we were bound to admit her privateers and prizes to our ports; and here, as any one could see, and as the sequel amply proved, was a fertile source of dangerous complications. Then by the treaty of alliance we guaranteed to France her West Indian possessions, binding ourselves to aid her in their defense; and a proclamation of neutrality when France was actually at war with a great naval power was an immediate and obvious limitation upon this guarantee. Hamilton argued that while France had an undoubted right to change her government, the ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... blocked the roads with fallen trees, toppled over a barn, and—blew potatoes out of the ground! When that was done, a white cloud shaped like a dumb-bell whirled down the valley across the evening blue, roaring and twisting and twisting and roaring all alone by itself. A West Indian hurricane could not have been quicker on its feet than our little cyclone, and when the house rose a-tiptoe, like a cockerel in act to crow, and a sixty-foot elm went by the board, and that which had been a dusty road ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... likely to be menaced if the war was renewed. Under these circumstances Grenville determined that a small army of ten thousand men should be kept in America, under the distinct promise that it was never to serve beyond that country and the West Indian Isles, and he asked America to contribute 100,000l. a year, or about a ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... difficulties in making the approaches on a hard rocky soil were great, and the troops suffered from sickness, fatigue, and the fire of the enemy; but being joined by fresh reinforcements from New York and our West Indian Islands, the fort was isolated from the town, and it was then stormed through a narrow and perilous breach, and carried at the point of the bayonet. The city of Havannah maintained the siege a fortnight longer; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... award of the V.C. to Indians, many writers sent letters to the Press claiming that it was unprecedented for coloured warriors to wear the V.C. Whitaker and similar publications might have told them that a Native African sergeant of the West Indian Regiment wears the V.C. won on the Gambia River as ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... Islands. I have heard Cuba named as his government; and it might have been that, the short time Cuba was in {56} the possession of the English, he was governor of it; but I am uncertain. If any correspondent, versed in West Indian affairs, can give me any particulars of the family and antecedents of the above, or any reference to his services (for I suppose him to have been a military ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various
... Romeo and Juliet, the Clandestine Marriage, the West Indian, the Gamester, Every one has his fault, and other dramatic works of this order, fail to afford attractions equal to Mother Goose, Cinderilla, the Forty thieves, an elephant, or a band of Indians, can it be a subject of surprise if the managers furnish those bills of fare, which possess the greatest ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... province is Vera Cruz; a sea-port, the residence of the governor, and the centre of the Spanish West Indian and American commerce. This city is beautifully and regularly built; but on an arid plain, destitute of water, and covered with hills of moving sand, that are formed by the north winds, which blow; with impetuosity, every year, from October ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... breach and to embitter the contest between the parties of the administration and of the opposition. When in 1829 Mr. McLane had received his instructions as Minister to England, he had been directed by Mr. Van Buren to reopen negotiations on the subject of the West Indian trade, and in so doing the Secretary of State had reflected on the previous administration, and had said that the party in power would not support the pretensions of its predecessors. Such language was, of course, at variance with ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... wide its doors for the swarthy little West Indian. He was allowed to choose his own course, and every advantage of the university was offered him. In a university, you get just all you are able to hold—it depends upon yourself—and at the last all men who are made ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... products is not neglected. Excellent coffee is grown; and arrow-root, equal to the best West Indian, is prepared, at 18s. 6d. per bottle of twenty-four ounces, about a fourth of the price ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... colonizing, but to return to the east-south-east, in quest of Babeque, which he trusted might prove some rich and civilized island on the coast of Asia." And so he sailed away for Hispaniola (Santo Domingo) which appears to have become, a little later, his favorite West Indian resort. ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... great numbers of people, who flocked from all parts to admire his ships. After making many other voyages, which are not specified, he settled in Seville, where he employed himself in making sea charts, and had the appointment of pilot-major, all pilots for the West Indian Seas having to pass his examination, and to have his license[15]. He thought fit, however, to return into England, and was employed by Henry VIII. In the service of that sovereign he made a voyage to the coast of Brazil in 1516, under the superior command of Sir Thomas Pert, vice-admiral of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... old Admiral was not mistaken in his prophecy. A furious West Indian hurricane broke on the last day of June; but his poor little ships, instead of lying safe in the shelter of San Domingo harbor, were exposed to all the ravages of the storm. Why? Because Ovando had refused to let him ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... more astonished then before I've done; so just listen. As Jack Pringle says, it was the matter of about somewhere forty years ago, that I was in command of the Victory frigate, which was placed upon the West Indian station, during a war then raging, for the protection of our ports and harbours in that vicinity. We'd not a strong force in that quarter, therefore, I had to cut about from place to place, and do the best I could. After a time, though, I rather think that we frightened ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... a certain boundary line was instant death without trial, and where it was commonly said, "There is not wood enough to hang a man, water enough to drown him, nor earth enough to bury him." One hundred thousand Catholics were sold as slaves to the West Indian and North American planters by the public authority of the Cromwellian government. Such was the way these Christians showed their love for their fellow Christians, and can it be wondered that ever since than there has been one continual succession of uprisings ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... or a pig, and who was sometimes accompanied by a black man. Louder next related his experience of being changed to a horse and ridden to a witches' ball, and of seeing Rebecca Nurse ride through the air on a broomstick. The West Indian negro man John, the husband of Tituba and servant of Mr. Parris, was next put on the witness stand. The magistrate ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... more beautiful than glass or the combinations of tin and copper. Nothing astonished the American races more than the extraordinary value set upon gold and silver by the Spaniards; they could not understand it. A West Indian savage traded a handful of gold-dust with one of the sailors accompanying Columbus for some tool, and then ran for his life to the woods lest the sailor should repent his bargain and call him back. The Mexicans had coins of tin shaped like a letter T. ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... 1657 Admiral Blake, the first great name in the annals of our navy, performed his last feat of arms by destroying the Spanish West Indian fleet at Santa Cruz without the loss of an English vessel. The gallant sailor died of fever on his way home, and was buried according to his deserts in the Abbey. His body, with that of his master, was ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... the most precious gifts. It is not difficult to imagine the envy which must thus have been excited. Many a haughty duchess was provoked, almost beyond endurance, that Josephine, the untitled daughter of a West Indian planter, should thus engross the homage of Paris, while she, with her proud rank, her wit, and her beauty, was comparatively a cipher. Moreau's wife, in particular resented the supremacy of Josephine as a personal affront. She thought General Moreau entitled to as much consideration as General ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... 1833 England gave freedom to the West Indian slaves at a cost of twenty millions—worth now thirty millions. This money left the country. England got nothing for it. By an expenditure of eighty millions she may free her own people. She would have the hold over the land, ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Sampson was made to steam hither and yon in the Caribbean Sea looking for an enemy's fleet which much of the time lay snugly on the other side of the Atlantic. Accordingly, up to June 15, the results of naval operations in West Indian waters were almost nil. Powder had been burned indeed as when, on April 27, the Spanish works at Matanzas were bombarded and silenced by the "New York," "Puritan," and "Cincinnati," of Admiral Sampson's squadron, and ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... several other staples that also contributed to this result. Of prime importance should be rated maize or Indian Corn. Maize saved the colony from starvation on several occasions. Maize became an export commodity to the New England and West Indian colonies when the price for tobacco fell below the cost of transportation to Europe. Maize aided the colonists in the production of valuable livestock products. This crop has done more to promote the wealth and welfare ...
— Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Lyman Carrier
... India, and got "the most meagre ears," on land which would certainly have yielded a good crop from English wheat.[770] In these cases varieties have been carried from a warmer to a cooler climate; in the reverse case, as "when wheat was imported directly from France into the West Indian Islands, it produced either wholly barren spikes or furnished with only two or three miserable seeds, while West Indian seed by its side yielded an enormous harvest."[771] Here is another case of close adaptation to a slightly cooler climate; a kind of wheat which ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... uncle Gregory would say if I were to marry a West Indian! He wouldn't say much to me, because we never speak, but he'd lead poor Greg a horrid life. He'd be sure to think she was a nigger, or at least a Creole. But I shan't ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... strongly fortified, and difficult of access to strangers;—and all within a few days' sail of the chief ports of the Atlantic shores of the New World. England therefore retains them as a station on the road to her West Indian possessions; and should America go to war with her, she would use it as a base for offensive operations, where she might gather and whence she might hurl upon any unprotected port all her ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... more competition is much wanted. But the coal-depot may prove dangerous. The mineral in the tropics produces by its exhalations fatal fevers, especially that exaggerated form of bilious-remittent popularly known as 'Yellow Jack.' It is certain that in places like West Indian St. Thomas the neighbourhood of the coal-sheds is more unhealthy, without apparent reason, than ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... that both he and the Queen were anxious that something be done for the colored people in the Danish possessions similar to what we were doing at Tuskegee. He added that he hoped at some time I would find it possible to visit the Danish West Indian Islands. ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... negroes sixty years ago, at a cost of 40,000,000, and has never ceased boasting about it since. But at our own doors, from "Plymouth to Peterhead," stretches this waste Continent of humanity—three million human beings who are enslaved—some of them to taskmasters as merciless as any West Indian overseer, all of them to destitution ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... their captives. The human mind can not withhold its assent from the justice of the verdict, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." The English made all their captives slaves, and women and children were sold to all the horrors of West Indian plantation bondage. The Narraganset Indian who owned Mrs. Rowlandson soon sold her to a celebrated chieftain named Quinnapin, a Narraganset sachem, who had married, for one of his three wives, Wetamoo, of whom we have heretofore spoken. Quinnapin is represented as a "young, lusty sachem, and a ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... in the West Indian waters was the purchase in 1917 of the Danish Islands just off the coast of Porto Rico. The strategic position of the islands, especially in relation to Haiti and Porto Rico, made them an object of American concern as early as ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... the answer to this query. These men were cattle-rustlers and horse-thieves, than which no more hazardous existence ever was since the gentle days of West Indian piracy, and to them merely a single pistol shot might mean betrayal of their whereabouts, capture ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... Mediterranean, in the Gulf of Mexico, on the coast of Africa, on the continent of America, she had been compelled to cede the fruits of her victories in former wars. Spain regained Minorca and Florida; France regained Senegal, Goree, and several West Indian Islands. The only quarter of the world in which Britain had lost nothing was the quarter in which her interests had been committed to the care of Hastings. In spite of the utmost exertions both of European and Asiatic enemies, the power of our country in the East had been ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and feeling of unpleasantness towards my young brother Campbell, who, being a West Indian, probably did not understand those white Americans, and formed his opinion of American blacks and their capacity to "lead," from the estimate they set upon them. I owe it to posterity, the destiny of my race, the great adventure into which I am embarked and the position I sustain ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... For intellectual pursuits the kangaroo is not fitted. But he can jump; and the disconsolate grasshopper, whose hind-leg copyright the kangaroo has infringed, is far behind the record. It is, in fact, reported of an educated West Indian that, visiting New South Wales and encountering his first kangaroo, he sat down immediately to write an essay on the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... carried;' and this he repeated twice. Lord Durham has volunteered to give up his salary as Privy Seal, which is no great sacrifice, considering how long he is likely to enjoy it, and everybody gives him credit for having suggested the relief to coals for his own interest. Lady Holland, who has got a West Indian estate, attacked him about the sugar duties, and asked him if they would not reduce them. He said 'No.' She retorted, 'That is because you have no West Indian estate; you have got your own job about coals done, and you don't care about us.' In the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... summer temperature is still higher; and, owing to the moisture of the atmosphere, consequent on the vicinity of the sea, the heat is of that peculiarly oppressive character which prevails on the sea-coast of Hindustan, in Ceylon, in the West Indian Islands, at New Orleans, and in other places whose situation is similar. The vital powers languish under this oppression, which produces in the European a lassitude of body and a prostration of mind that wholly unfit him for active duties. On the Asiatic, however, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... upon some difference of eyes, complexion, and so forth—be pleased to step forward, sir."—A young seafaring man came forward.—"Here," proceeded the counsellor, "is the real Simon Pure—here's Godfrey Bertram Hewit, arrived last night from Antigua via Liverpool, mate of a West Indian, and in a fair way of doing well in the world, although he came ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... years Spain struggled vainly with the West Indian problem. Four large islands and forty small ones, peopled by barbarians, were beyond the range of Spanish experience in the art of government. Grants of land were made, with the condition that the holder should exercise a ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... West Indian! whose untutored mind To Christmas giving makes me disinclined, Who tellest callers I have moved away And mixest up the morning mail each day. When for thine elevator car I ring Thou telephonest or some other thing; While, ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... Cork, Dublin, and Greenock to Edinburgh, where he abode for a short time. Thence he started for London; and, desirous of testing the best way of sustaining physical strength during long marches, and urged perhaps also by economical considerations, he resolved to make the journey on foot. His West Indian and American experience had taught him that spare diet consisted best with pedestrian efficiency, and it was accordingly his practice, during this long walk, to abstain from animal food until the close of day, nor often then to partake of it. He would walk some fourteen miles before breakfast—a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... former colonial power, would use the Mississippi Valley as a means of provisioning her West Indian islands; of dominating Spanish America, and of subordinating to her purposes the feeble United States, which her policy assigned to the lands between the Atlantic and the Alleghanies. The ancient Bourbon monarchy, the revolutionary ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... government. There are districts in the North-West more densely peopled than any districts in Europe occupied by an agricultural population. The emigration of coolies to the Mauritius, to Bourbon, to the coast of South America, and to the West Indian Islands, has done little to relieve the pressure. Migration to unoccupied parts of Central India and Assam has been carried out to a small extent, and it is very desirable this migration should increase. ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... friend, Mrs. Mayow, was the wife of a gentleman in a high position in one of our Government offices. She was a West Indian creole, and a singularly beautiful person. Her complexion was of the clear olive-brown of a perfectly Moorish skin, with the color of a damask rose in her cheeks, and lips as red as coral. Her features were classically symmetrical, as was the soft, oval ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... pronunciation is derived from negroes, can make out an interesting case. If, they ask, the negro has corrupted the English of the South, why is it that he has not also corrupted the language of the West Indies—British and French? French negroes speak like French persons of white blood, and British West Indian negroes often speak the cockney dialect, without a trace of "nigger." Moreover, it is pointed out that in southern countries, the world over, there is a tendency to soften the harsh sounds of language, to elide, and drop out consonants. The Andalusians speak a Spanish comparable in many of its ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... and does sing such love ditties, and talk sweet nothings to the Southern black woman, and the woman of mixed blood, but unlike Solomon, he is too much of a coward to publicly extol her. During the slave period in the West Indian Islands a child born to a slave woman shared the fortunes of its father; and if the father was free, so was the child. But the American slave holder reversed that law so that he could humble the bond-woman ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... on board, by birth a West Indian, engaged to dive under the ship's bottom, and to acquaint us with the state of it, which was gladly accepted. In his youth he had been a fisherman on the coast of the island of Jamaica: the weather being ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... species C. mamillaris seems to have stood as the type, not only of the Linnaean genus Cactus, but also of Haworth's Mamillaria, and as such should retain the original generic name. Besides, Mamillaria was used as the generic name of an alga in 1809. Cactus mamillaris L. is the West Indian ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter
... that there is more work—a good deal more work—to be done on this station than there are ships to do it; consequently, although every ship at my disposal is now at sea, I am continually receiving complaints that the commerce in West Indian waters is inadequately protected. I have applied for additional ships, but have been told that there are none to spare, and that I must do the best I can with what I have. The fact is that the Caribbean ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... achieved immediate and unexpected success; and having realized a few pounds from its profits, Burns set out for Greenock, where he was to take ship for his new West Indian home. But his poems had attracted so much attention, and had been the cause of such commendation, that he was finally encouraged to stay and enjoy some of the fruits of his genius, which the world ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... no doubt has been caused by the ejected fragments and ashes being always blown, during eruptions, in greater quantity towards one side than towards the other. M. Moreau de Jonnes has made a similar observation with respect to the volcanic orifices in the West Indian Islands. ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... calling for no particular record. Mr. Hamlyn's West Indian property, which was large and lucrative, had been giving him trouble of late; at least, those who had the care of it gave it, and he was obliged to go over occasionally to see after it in person. Between ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... hammer and adze, are half covered by the delicate lace ruffles at his wrists. On a table lies his silver-hilted sword, and in a corner of the room stands his gold-headed cane, made of a beautifully polished West Indian wood. ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tedious campaigns. At no time had England in the West Indies a force sufficient to withstand the ravages of disease and to overcome the Republicans and their black allies. Nevertheless, while the conduct of the West Indian campaigns is open to censure, it is difficult to see what other course could have been adopted towards those important colonies, in view of the resolve of the French Jacobins to revolutionize them. The attempt was made and partly succeeded. Could Pitt and his colleagues ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... Clinton had received notice from his government that, in consequence of the alliance between France and the United States, a new plan of operations had been determined on. The French were to be attacked in their West Indian possessions by way of diversion from the main scene of action. Five thousand men were detached from his army to aid in the execution of this purpose, and 3,000 were sent to Florida. Clinton was also apprised that a French fleet would probably appear in the Delaware and thus ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... to the vast extension of French territorial influence, and in order to protect English commerce in those seas: for the rest, the British Government could not regard the maintenance of the integrity of Portugal as an equivalent to the surrender by Great Britain of her West Indian conquests, especially as France had acquired further portions of Saint Domingo. Nevertheless he offered to restore Trinidad to Spain, if she would reinstate Portugal in the frontier strip of Olivenza; and, on August 5th, he ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... soul, unsympathetic his nature who can see the forests and mountains of Luzon, Queen of the Eastern Isles, fade away into dim violet outlines on the fast receding horizon without some pang of longing regret. Not the Aegean, not the West Indian, not the Samoan, not any rival in manifold beauties of earth, sea and sky the Philippine Archipelago. Pity that for the Philippines no word limner of note exists. The chiefest, the almost exceptional spell of the Philippines, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... popularity of Cook's voyages spread afar the fame of breadfruit as an article of food. Certain West Indian planters were of opinion that it would be advantageous to establish the trees on their islands and to encourage the consumption of the fruit by their slaves. Not only was it considered that the use of breadfruit would cheapen the cost of the slaves' living, but—a consideration that ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... bridegroom, by special license, at a Marylebone church—Sir James Chide, in the background, looking on. They departed for a three days' holiday to Brighton, and on the fourth day they were due to sail by a West Indian steamer for Barbadoes, where Sir James had procured for Mr. Frederick Birch a post in the office of a large sugar estate, in which an old friend of Chide's had an interest. Fanny showed no rapture in the prospect of thus returning to the bosom of her family. ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... by a single careless word, or act. The whole affair seemed more a nightmare than a reality. I was actually serving as first officer on a pirate ship in search of vessels to rob on the high seas, commanding a crew of West Indian cut-throats—the very scum of hell, and under the order of a Portuguese devil, whose ambition coolly plotted murder. I was sailing under the black flag, to be hung if captured, compelled to act out the masquerade, a satellite ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... the ravages of wolves and dogs and partly because the sheep is a perverse animal that often seems to prefer dying to keeping alive and requires skilled care to be made profitable. The breeds were various and often were degenerated. Travelers saw Holland or rat-tailed sheep, West Indian sheep with scant wool and much resembling goats, also a few Spanish sheep, but none would have won encomiums from a scientific English breeder. The merino had not yet been introduced. Good breeds of sheep were difficult to obtain, for both the English ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... craft varied considerably. For over three years they maintained a constant patrol in the North Sea, Atlantic, English Channel, Irish Sea, Mediterranean, Adriatic, Suez Canal, Straits of Gibraltar, and in West Indian waters. Only one who knows by experience can fully appreciate what work in these northern seas, with their winter snows and Arctic winds, and their chilly summer fogs, really means to a mere thirty tons of nautical humanity in as many ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... express his satisfaction at the escape of his young friends from the numerous dangers to which they had been exposed. Night was now coming on, and it was evident that the ship was in the midst of a regular West Indian hurricane. The French officer was evidently a good seaman, and did all that could be done under the circumstances for the safety of the ship. The topgallant-masts were struck, and every sail was furled ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... (where their miserable condition opened new sources of anger and revenge,) was the importation only of the seeds of insurrection into them. And here he could not but view with astonishment the reasoning of the West Indian planters, who held up the example of St. Domingo as a warning against the abolition of the Slave Trade; because the continuance of it was one of the great causes of the insurrections and subsequent miseries in that devoted island. Let us but encourage importations ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... Park. C.M.G., indeed! What a ridiculous old peacock. He was administrator of St. Kitts once upon a time, I believe, or was it Nevis or Antigua? I don't quite recollect, I'm afraid; but anyhow, some comical little speck of a sugary, niggery, West Indian Island; and he was made a Companion of St. Michael and St. George when his term was up, just to keep him quiet, don't you know, for he wanted a knighthood, and to shelve him from being appointed to a first-class post like Barbados or Trinidad. If it's Elma Clifford you were shut up with in ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... himself possesses ingenuity in inflicting suffering, superior to that displayed by the Spanish conquerors and their immediate followers, has never been demonstrated. The gentle, unresisting natives of the West Indian Islands, whose delicate constitutions incapacitated them to bear labours their masters exacted of them, were their first victims. The descriptions penned as of the cruelties practised on these harmless creatures ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... adjacent territory were surrendered to us. A treaty was then negotiated, the power of Spain being completely broken, under which she abandoned all claims of sovereignty, not only over the island of Cuba, the original cause of war, but over various other islands in the Philippine, as well as in the West Indian, archipelagoes. These islands, in all said to be some 1,200 to 1,500 in number, are moreover not only inhabited by both natives and foreigners to the estimated number of ten to twelve million of souls, but they contain large cities and communities speaking different tongues, ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams
... huge society of the present period, was limited in its proportions, and composed of elements more refined though far less various. It consisted mainly of the great landed aristocracy, who had quite absorbed the nabobs of India, and had nearly appropriated the huge West Indian fortunes. Occasionally, an eminent banker or merchant invested a large portion of his accumulations in land, and in the purchase of parliamentary influence, and was in time duly admitted into the sanctuary. But those vast and successful invasions of society by new classes which have since occurred, ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... birth an American, was, in all respects, from the habits of his life, a citizen of the world. He was born at a small village called Groton, in Connecticut, on the banks of the Thames; his father was a captain in the West Indian trade, but died young, leaving a widow and four children, of whom John was the eldest; his mother is described as "a lady of many excellences of mind and character, beautiful in person, well informed, resolute, generous, amiable, kind, and, above all, eminent for piety and the religious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... Eliza Monk with a smile. "My mother was a West Indian, and I was born there.—There's my home, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... hostile to the United States. In that case she was either grappling for the cable between Key West and the mainland terminus at Punta Rossa, which lay close inshore at Snipe Point, or was trying to make connection with some other vessel carrying supplies or ammunition from some West Indian port, perhaps intending to run ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... fastest passage from the Capes; and she sailed, as was no doubt most convenient, the Saturday following. I should find her a comfortable vessel, and he would oblige me with a letter to Captain Alsop. Did Captain Paul know him? But the captain was describing West Indian life to Mrs. Manners. Dorothy had little to say; and as for me, I was in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in consequence, in weathering the storm for them all. And after his death, a nephew of my mother's, a young man who had served his apprenticeship under him, was treated with great kindness on the Spanish Main, for his sake, by a West Indian captain, whose ship and crew he had saved, as the captain told the lad, by boarding them in a storm, at imminent risk to himself, and working their vessel into port, when, in circumstances of similar exhaustion, they were drifting full upon an iron-bound shore. ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... of the turtle, the true green turtle of City fame, to eat which at the invitation of City dignitaries is one of the few duties of a legislator. Both the green turtles and the tortoise-shell turtles are being destroyed indiscriminately on the coast of Florida and in many West Indian Islands by brutal, careless, "white" beach-combers and idlers. By proper care of the eggs and young the turtles could easily be increased enormously in number, and a regulated capture of them be made to yield a legitimate ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... with alcohol, resembles the smell of pine-apple, and hence its name; but how far the same observations are applicable to the true essential oil from the fruit or epidermis of the pine-apple, remains to be seen when we procure it. As the West Indian pine-apples are now coming freely into the market, the day is probably not distant when demonstrative experiments can be tried; but hitherto it must be remembered our experiments have only been performed with a body resembling in smell the true essential oil of the fruit. The physical action of ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... native of Genoa in Italy, by the encouragement and assistance of Ferdinand and Isabella, King and Queen of Spain, discovered the West Indian Islands, and some parts of the Continent of South America, about the year 1492, or 1493 of Christ; and other parts of it were discovered by Americus Vespucci (Vespucius) about the year 1497, from whom the whole took its name; but neither of them seems to have been the ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... young scholards left a letter to his ma on his table, open for everybody to see, talking some gammon about a West Indian island, and saying you was going to lay hold of the Long Stork, to get your hands in. I can tell you you have got your hands in, my beauties. There's a cart-load of birches been ordered for you ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... chapters recount all that was of most public interest in the thirty years of my father's life after his return from Greece. Except during a brief period of active service in his profession, when he had command of the British squadron in North American and West Indian waters, those thirty years were chiefly spent in efforts—by scientific research, by mechanical experiment, and by persevering argument—to increase the naval power of his country, and in efforts no less zealous to secure for ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... verse about which Edward Alden inquired in your issue of July 26. and which is quoted in Stevenson's "Treasure Island," is the opening stanza of an old song or chantey of West Indian piracy, which is believed to have originated from the wreck of an English buccaneer on a cay in the Caribbean Sea known as "The Dead Man's Chest." The cay was so named from its fancied resemblance to the old sailors' sea chest which held his scanty belongings. ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... formation—where the lights and shades in my character were intended. I was pretty confident my poems would meet with some applause; but, at the worst, the roar of the Atlantic would deafen the voice of censure, and the novelty of West Indian scenes make me forget neglect. I threw off six hundred copies, of which I had got subscriptions for about three hundred and fifty.—My vanity was highly gratified by the reception I met with from the public; and besides I pocketed, all expenses deducted, nearly twenty pounds. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... commands, and upon its use of the word "Commonwealth," as if the corporation were already an independent state. These reports were accepted by the English authorities as correct statements of fact, for they seemed to be confirmed by the evidence of London merchants and by at least one West Indian governor, who knew the colony and had no personal interests ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... coloring matter derived from the seeds of an evergreen plant, Bixa Orellana, which grows in the East and West Indian Islands and South America, in the latter of which it is principally prepared. Two kinds are imported, Spanish annatto, made in Brazil, and flag or French, made mostly in Cayenne. These differ considerably in characters ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... extortion, to say nothing of his exceedingly bad record as a pirate, both in East and West Indian waters, compel a far different estimate of him as a man, from that of Arber, however excellent he was as a mariner. Professor Arber dissents from Goodwin's conclusion that Captain Jones of the DISCOVERY was the former Master of the MAY-FLOWER, ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... GYNANDRA.—This West Indian tree yields a small fruit which has a strong smell of garlic, hence it is called the garlic pear. The bark is bitter and used ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... desirable that other types of cloth should be introduced so that these yarns could be utilized. About the year 1838, representatives of the Dutch Government placed comparatively large orders with the manufacturers for jute bags to be used for carrying the crop of coffee beans from their West Indian possessions. The subsequent rapid growth of the industry, and the demand for newer types of cloth, are perhaps due more to the above fortunate experiment than to any ...
— The Jute Industry: From Seed to Finished Cloth • T. Woodhouse and P. Kilgour
... up his quarters for the past fortnight, and had spent his time down at the docks, where the Sirius was being overhauled in her rigging, and was getting in her stores and ammunition ready for her start to the West Indian station in ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... gentlemen, the board before you exhibits the disposition of the British West Indian squadron under Rodney, when, early on the morning of the 9th of April, in the year of our blessed Lord 1782, he discovered part of the French fleet, commanded by the Count de Grasse, lying under the north end of the Island of Dominica. It was at this juncture that the Admiral gave ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... was the multitude of free citizens which the Republic bequeathed to the empire, resident and exercising unfettered industry in Italy, the cultivators of Africa and Egypt were all serfs and slaves, toiling, like the West Indian negroes, beneath the lash of a master. How, then, did it happen that the labour of the Italian freeman was disused, and at length extinguished, while that of the African and Egyptian slaves continued ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... orchids and at the red West Indian flowers, and he thought of those crawling green jungles from which they should have ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... community) ... the bare means of subsistence, but to that degree of cruelty which is necessary to keep in existence the most intense terror.' An English gentleman, he says, is a favourable specimen of civilisation, and yet West Indian slavery shows of what cruelty he could be guilty when unchecked. If equal cruelty has not been exhibited elsewhere, it is, he seems to think, because men were not 'the same as sheep in respect to their shepherd,'[90] and may therefore ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... harp, with its strings broken, and its gilding tarnished, stood in one corner; and musical instruments of Congo origin hung against the wall. It was altogether a curious medley of European and African civilisation, brought together amidst the ruins of a West Indian revolution. ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... or another, by which we get things done. Still, it may well fall out, Hyde, in spite of all our care, that you will come into the hands of men with whom we have no influence. If you should, (remember, it is quite possible) you will be transported to serve in one of the Virginian or West Indian plantations. That will be the end of you as far as we are concerned. We shan't be able to help you then. If you think the cause is right, join us, provided that you do not think the ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... transport ships which had been lying for weeks in the harbors of Havana and Tampa, the Japanese news bureaus in Kingston (Jamaica) and Havana had been fully informed as to where the blow was to fall, partly by West Indian half-breed spies and partly by the obliging American press. One regiment of cavalry had already arrived at Corpus Christi from Tampa on July 30th, and the Cuban troops were expected on the ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... dissatisfaction with town life. The people lived too close together for her liking, at the Landing, and she could not get used to the constant sound of the sea. She had lived to lament three seafaring husbands, and her house was decorated with West Indian curiosities, specimens of conch shells and fine coral which they had brought home from their voyages in lumber-laden ships. Mrs. Todd had told me all our neighbor's history. They had been girls together, and, to use her own phrase, had ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... are worn even by the common soldiers on festive days; and it may be seen on people of all ranks even in poor towns. The fabrics are at least equal to those of China. The cotton of Japan seems to be of the same kind as that of our West Indian colonies. It furnishes the ordinary dress of the great mass of the people, and also serves all the other purposes for which we employ wool, flax, furs, and feathers. The culture of it is, of course, very ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... humming-birds and parrots are the most gorgeous among birds. Nay, more, exactly like effects have been produced in two hemispheres on different tribes by the same causes. The plain brown swifts of the North have developed among tropical West Indian and South American orchids the metallic gorgets and crimson crests of the humming-bird; while a totally unlike group of Asiatic birds have developed among the rich flora of India and the Malay Archipelago the exactly similar plumage of the exquisite sun-birds. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner |
