Page:The British Empire in the nineteenth century Volume VI.djvu/14

 2 poses involving a common interest. The language spoken is English in St. Vincent and generally among the educated people, but in Grenada and St. Lucia the prevailing tongue is a French patois. The legal currency is British sterling, with Spanish and United States gold coinage. The Colonial Bank, with branches in the larger islands, issues five-dollar notes, and there are savings-banks (about 1800 depositors and nearly £14,000 balances in 1893) at Grenada and St. Lucia. There are no railways nor internal telegraphs; the government have a telephone-line connecting the chief towns in Grenada. There is cable-communication with Europe and with the other West Indies; a penny internal and 2½ d. foreign postage up to the half-ounce, and parcel-post to and from the British Isles. The inter-colonial steamers run in connection with those from Southampton to Barbados, and there are fortnightly boats from Grenada to New York and London, and monthly steamers to several other ports.

Grenada, the most southerly of the group now under review, is about 60 miles from the northern coast of South America, and runs due north, from the line of 12 degrees north latitude, for 21 miles, with a maximum breadth of 12 miles. The area is 133 sq. miles; the population, over 60,000 in 1898, showing a large increase (above 40 per cent) since 1881, is mostly blacks, with more than 2000 coolie labourers from the East Indies. This picturesque, mountainous, volcanic island has ridges of hills covered with brushwood and forest, and a range that runs from north to south, with peaks sometimes reaching an altitude of over 3000 feet, and having some ancient craters now transformed into lakes. The country abounds in streams and mineral springs, and the soil has the usual fertility of the West Indies. For the wonders of tropical vegetation in the West Indies, especially on the large scale seen in Trinidad, we may here refer readers, once for all, to Charles Kingsley's excellent and enthusiastic book At Last, which also contains much geological matter and references to the fauna of the islands. Of the hill-lakes the beautiful Grand Etang, on the summit of a mountain-ridge, lies 1740 feet above the sea, surrounded by bamboos and tree-ferns. The south-eastern coast is low-lying and swampy.

Ruled as a Crown colony, under a constitution set forth in Letters Patent of March, 1885, Grenada has a Governor (in charge