who only knew that they were free, and intended to remain free, took to the bush, and fed on the wild cush-cush roots and the plunder of the plantations, man-hunting, murdering French and English alike, and being put to death in return whenever caught.  Gentle Abercrombie could not coax them into peace:  stern Moore could not shoot and hang them into it; and the ‘Brigand war’ dragged hideously on, till Moore—­who was nearly caught by them in a six-oared boat off the Pitons, and had to row for his life to St. Vincent, so saving himself for the glory of Corunna—­was all but dead of fever; and Colonel James Drummond had to carry on the miserable work, till the whole ‘Armee Francaise dans les bois’ laid down their rusty muskets, on the one condition, that free they had been, and free they should remain.  So they were formed into an English regiment, and sent to fight on the coast of Africa; and in more senses than one ’went to their own place.’  Then St. Lucia was ours till the peace of 1802; then French again, under the good and wise Nogues; to be retaken by us in 1803 once and for all.

I tell this little story at some length, as an instance of what these islands have cost us in blood and treasure.  I have heard it regretted that we restored Martinique to the French, and kept St. Lucia instead.  But in so doing, the British Government acted at least on the advice which Rodney had given as early as the year 1778.  St. Lucia, he held, would render Martinique and the other islands of little use in war, owing to its windward situation and its good harbours; for from St. Lucia every other British island might receive speedy succour.  He advised that the Little Carenage should be made a permanent naval station, with dockyard and fortifications, and a town built there by Government, which would, in his opinion, have become a metropolis for the other islands.  And indeed, Nature had done her part to make such a project easy of accomplishment.  But Rodney’s advice was not taken—­any more than his advice to people the island, by having a considerable quantity of land in each parish allotted to ten-acre men (i.e. white yeomen), under penalty of forfeiting it to the Crown should it be ever converted to any other use than provision ground (i.e. thrown into sugar estates).  This advice shows that Rodney’s genius, though, with the prejudices of his time, he supported not only slavery, but the slave-trade itself, had perceived one of the most fatal weaknesses of the slave-holding and sugar-growing system.  And well it would have been for St. Lucia if his advice had been taken.  But neither ten-acre men nor dockyards were ever established in St. Lucia.  The mail-steamers, if they need to go into dock, have, I am ashamed to say, to go to Martinique, where the French manage matters better.  The admirable Carenage harbour is empty; Castries remains a little town, small, dirty, dilapidated, and unwholesome; and St. Lucia itself is hardly to be called a colony, but rather the nucleus of a colony, which may become hereafter, by energy and good government, a rich and thickly-peopled garden up to the very mountain-tops.