eighteenth centuries most of the smaller islands were constantly changing hands. In some, as St. Kitts, colonists from rival nations settled side by side; and, wherever the buccaneers established themselves, they united adventurers of all nationalities against the power of Spain.

There is however one point which all the American colonies of Great Britain, North American and West Indian alike, have in common. They are settlements and not mere dependencies. The heat of the West Indies has not prevented the British race from colonising the islands, and though the negro element has long been greatly superior in numbers to the white, the history of an island like Barbados shows that even in the tropics the connexion between Great Britain and America has been that of permanent settlement rather than of passing trade or of foreign rule.

SECTION I.

THE BERMUDAS1.

2

I.

THE smallest, one of the earliest, and the most secluded SECTION of all the American dependencies of Great Britain, the Bermudas or Somers islands have an interest out of all proportion to their size and importance. Geography and history have made them a connecting link Geographi

Historical

and

cal Interest

Bermudas.

between the British colonies in North America and the of the
British colonies in the West Indies. Their early story is
full of romance, the history of their growth and develop-
ment has much that is instructive in it. A point of call,
a possession of a trading company, an emporium for pass-
ing traffic, a military and naval station, the home of a
slave-holding community, a depôt for convicts, and a colony
in the fullest sense with representative institutions from
the very first, this little group of coral islands only wanted
native inhabitants to have been a miniature world, exhibiting
every phase of colonisation and containing every kind of
colonist.

3

The Bermudas were discovered at the beginning of the

1 As the colony consists of a group of islands, the plural 'Bermudas' seems more correct than the singular 'Bermuda.'

2 The Bermudas are farther from the mainland than the Falkland Islands.

3 The exact date is uncertain. See the Memorials of the Bermudas, by Sir J. H. Lefroy.

SECTION Sixteenth century by a Spaniard, Juan Bermudez, from whom

I.

they take their first and best known name.

His ship is said to have been called La Garza (the Heron), and that name

Discovery
and earliest also was for a short while borne by the group.

notices of the islands.

Some years later1 the King of Spain received a proposal from Ferdinando Camelo, a Portuguese and a native of the Azores, for colonising the islands. The scheme, however, was apparently never carried out, although an inscription on the main island, containing the figures 1543, has been taken as evidence that Camelo took possession of it at that date.

Hurrying on to and from tropical America and the sunny West Indies, intent on the wonders of Mexico and the gold of Peru, the Spaniards were not likely to take heed of the insignificant islands, which lay in the middle of the stormy Atlantic, almost beyond their beat. They passed them by, as the Portuguese passed by Mauritius on their way to the spice islands of the East, their first discoverer, so the story goes, merely leaving on them a number of pigs for the benefit of after comers 2. Rock-bound, storm-beaten, and desolate, the group was styled by the Spanish sailors the 'isles of Devils,' though all the devils that haunted the woods were but herds of swine 3. Ships on their way from Havana to the Azores and Spain steered north towards them to take advantage of the Gulf Stream and to avoid the easterly trade winds; but they were warned to keep

1 Probably about the year 1527.

2 The Portuguese, in like manner, landed live stock at Mauritius, see vol. i. of this work, p. 163. Bermudez is credited with having, introduced the hogs, but they were apparently landed subsequently to the first discovery of the islands [see the Memorials of the Bermudas]. May found the descendants of these pigs 'so lean that you cannot eat them.' It is stated that the name Bermudas was falsely derived from an old Spanish word meaning 'black

hogs.'

From a tract published in 1610, and entitled, A true Declaration of the estate of the colony in Virginia. It is quoted in the Memorials of the Bermudas.