“Cuba is the largest and most important:  it commands the windward passage, as well as the entrance into the gulfs of Mexico and Florida, and is for that reason sometimes called the Key of the West Indies.  It is more than 700 miles in length, and its medium breadth 70 miles.  Havannah is the capital.

“Jamaica is a delightful island, endeared to me by many fond recollections; it is mountainous, extremely fertile, and abounding with springs (as its name signifies) of delicious water, a great luxury in a warm climate.  The top of the highest mountain, Blue Mountain Peak, is 7800 feet above the level of the sea.  Kingston is the chief place for trade.  The island is 150 miles from east to west, and its breadth is 60 miles in its widest part.

“St. Domingo, capital same name, is a pleasant fertile country.  The first town founded by Europeans in America was St. Domingo.  The bones of Christopher Columbus and his brother Lewis are deposited in two leaden coffins in the cathedral of this city.

“Porto Rico is 100 miles long and 40 broad.  It is beautifully diversified with woods, valleys, and plains, and extremely fertile.”

GRANDY.  “The Antilles are lovely islands, and some of the happiest moments of my life have been passed in admiring the wonderful works of our Creator, as shown to such advantage in the bright lands of the West.  Beautiful are the mornings in Jamaica, when the sun, appearing through a cloudless and serene atmosphere, illumines with his rays the summits of the mountains, and gilds the leaves of the plantain and orange-trees.  The plants are spread over with gossamer of fine and transparent silk, or gemmed with dew-drops, and the vivid hues of industrious insects, reflecting unnumbered tints from the rays of the sun.  The aspect of the richly cultivated valleys is different, but not less pleasing; the whole of nature teems with the most varied productions.  The views around are splendid; the lofty mountains adorned with thick foliage; the hills, from their summits to their very borders, fringed with plants of never fading verdure.  The appearance of the valleys is remarkable:  to form an imperfect idea of it, we must group together the stately palm-tree, the cocoa-nut, and tamarind trees, the clustering mango and orange-trees, the waving plumes of the feathery bamboo, and many others, too numerous to mention.  On these plains, too, you will find the bushy oleander, many varieties of Jerusalem thorn and African rose, the bright scarlet of the cordium, bowers of jessamine, vines of grenadilla, and the silver and silky leaves of the portlandia.  Fields of sugar-cane, houses of the planters, huts of the negroes almost hidden by the patches of cultivated ground attached to them, and the distant coast with ships, add to the beauty of the West Indian landscape.”