THE MENTOR 1918.08.15, No. 161,
The Virgin Islands

Island Life and Color

We landed at St. Thomas in front of a little square overhung by palm and mangotrees and shaded by lofty ferns, and were at once among a strange population.The children were all dressed in black, as nature made them, with eyes that shonelike glass beads. Some of the native women were carrying trays of vegetables, fruit,bread, or small wares upon their heads; others were squatting upon their heels, whilein front of them were little piles of sweet potatoes, peppers, limes, or a few sticks ofsugar-cane; others were hawking strings of shells and shining beans called “Job’s tears.”

If one climbs to the hill above the town of Charlotte Amalie, he obtains a charmingpicture: high-colored villas form the foreground, the beautiful bay, with its shipsand little islands, occupies the middle distance, while beyond, across the bluesea, are the shadowy forms of St. Croix and Porto Rico.

St. Croix is not so abrupt and severe as some of its associates, though it bearsabundant evidences of volcanic origin. It consists of a multitude of little peaksand rounded hills, with ravines and valleys between them. The mountains,where uncultivated, are a bluish green, but where the sugar-cane is largely grown, thecolor of the country-side is so light and rich a green that it seems as if Spring had justspread her mantle over the land. The plantations climb the hills and crown many ofthem, and skirt precipices, and sweep their waves of golden-green down to kiss thewhite sea-waves. There are long avenues of cocoa palms, with trunks rising fifty feetlike polished marble shafts, and then bursting out into a miracle of waving foliageand nests of green cocoanuts.

Frederiksted and Christiansted are generally called “West End” and “Basse(Low) End.” Our view of Frederiksted from the vessel had prepared us fora beautiful place. It has some buildings with arched fronts and many whiteand pink and yellow houses, half-hidden among the strange tamarind and palm andmango trees, but when we got ashore the vision vanished. The arcades were clumsyand crumbling, the streets unpaved and irregular, and the cabins where the negroeslived were far from picturesque. They are built of wood and usually consist of one ortwo rooms, in which a large family is huddled at night. The people spend most of thedaytime out of doors, and meals are prepared in the open air. There is no glass inthe windows, and wooden shutters serve to keep out the wind and rain.

Drives in the island of St. Croix over superb roads led us into valleys wherethere were tamarind trees, delicate-leaved as our locust, and giants called flamboyants,leafless but all aflame with scarlet flowers; and the silk cottonwoodwith enormous misshapen roots and long horizontal branches, on which grew a multitudeof parasites and air plants. Here, too, was the curiously formed frangipani, with hookedor claw-like

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