I. and slaves being about the same. In 1837, after the emanci- SECTION pation of the slaves, the population is stated not to have exceeded 8500. In 1844 it had risen again to 10,000, and since that date there has been a gradual increase. The census of 1881 showed a total population of 13,948, and in 1888 the population was estimated at more than 15,000, or about 800 to the square mile, over 6000 being white and over 9000 coloured'. The strength of the garrison is about 1400, and of the naval establishment about 1200. The sketch which has been given of early Bermudian Religion. history has shown that the settlers from the first were, like the Athenians to whom St. Paul preached, over-religious; and full provision is made at the present day for the support of religious ministrations. Two-thirds of the population belong to the Church of England, and the nine parishes are divided between five rectors, the colony being included in the bishopric of Newfoundland and Bermudas, which was established in 1839. Other Christian sects, however, of whom the Wesleyans are the most numerous 2, share the advantages of the system of concurrent endowment which dates from 1869, and all the denominations receive grants from government funds at the rate of £10 for every hundred members at the last preceding census. Although the records of the Bermudas are full of educa- Education. tional schemes, from free schools such as that kept by Norwood the Surveyor, to colleges such as the one projected by Bishop Berkeley, education does not appear to have been at any time very forward in the colony. At the present time schools, which are it is compulsory, carried on in aided 1 In the Memorials of the Bermudas it is stated (vol. i. 180) that towards the end of the eighteenth century the Bermudas became the home of many French families. 2 Whitefield visited the Bermudas in 1748. SECTION I. Currency and Finances. Distances and Communication. General The currency of the islands is British sterling, though gold doubloons also circulate. The annual revenue, over three-fourths of which are derived from customs duties, is sufficient to meet the current expenditure, both the one and the other being usually under £30,000. There is a small public debt of less than £10,000. The bulk of the trade of the islands is with the United States, the imports largely exceed the exports, and among the latter onions and potatoes stand far ahead. The nearest point of land to the Bermudas is Cape Hatteras in North Carolina, at a distance of less than 600 miles. New York is a little under 700 miles distant, and Havana about 1200. The islands are about the same distance from the nearest of the Bahamas as from New York, and about the same distance from Kingston in Jamaica as from Havana. They are rather over 700 miles from Halifax in Nova Scotia, and 900 from Antigua, the Ichief of the Leeward Islands. There is constant steam communication with New York, but the direct steamers to and from Great Britain are few and irregular. A contract has lately been made for laying down a submarine telegraph cable between the islands and Halifax', but as yet they are outside the range of telegraphic communication. The Bermudas are not a colony valuable for the produce Summary of its soil. They are not an emporium for passing trade, or a fortress on a great commercial route. Nor are they again a land, where a large native population has become accustomed to British rule. They are a corner of the empire, which is held to the mother country by long, unbroken, purely English traditions; and their present practical value consists in being one of the ocean strongholds of Great Britain. In the Atlantic they are to some extent what Mauritius is in the Indian Ocean, but far more of a fortress, far less of a country, than Mauritius. From another point of 1 Since the above was written the cable has been laid. As it is, I. view they are not unlike Heligoland; the one is a winter SECTION resort for Americans, the other a summer resort for Germans. Very small, very isolated, self-contained within their coral ring, difficult to enter, secure when entered, a little English home between England and England's children on either side of the Atlantic, the history of these islands is curiously attractive. Had they been larger and more important, it may be said that they would have had less individuality, their story would have been less continuous, and they would have been more absorbed in the main stream of events. they have lived a life of their own, passively reflecting the different phases of time and circumstance, coloured rather than changed by history. Though an Imperial station, they are still the home of a small community with local life, traditions, and institutions. Though in close touch with New York and all the trade and bustle of the modern world, they still seem to be looking back on the past, and in their main features to be what they have ever been, the peaceful summer isles of the Atlantic. BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS RELATING TO THE BERmudas. In addition to the Blue Books and the good account given in the Colonial Office List, the following are some of the principal works on the subject: The Historye of the Bermudaes or Summer Islands. Hakluyt series. 1882. Memorials of the Discovery and Early Settlement of the Bermudas This most exhaustive book quotes in extenso the old authorities An Historical and Statistical Account of the Bermudas from their Bermuda, by T. L. GODET, M.D. 1860. Bermuda Past and Present, by John Ogilvy, M.A., M.D. Hamilton, This last is a pamphlet giving a most full and clear account of the The Narrative of the Voyage of the Challenger should also be consulted. SECTION II. ༢ CHAPTER I. EUROPEAN COLONISATION IN THE WEST INDIES. THE West Indian Islands belonging to Great Britain are at present divided into six colonies or sets of colonies, scattered through the whole semicircle of islands from Florida to the Orinoco, and not grouped in any one corner of the Archipelago. They are the Bahamas, Jamaica with its little dependencies of the Turks and Caicos islands and the Caymans, the Leeward islands, Barbados, the Windward islands, and Trinidad and Tobago. Great Britain owns also two mainland dependencies in this part of the world, British Guiana and British Honduras. The name West Indies recalls the fact that the discovery of the new world originated in an attempt to find a western route to the eastern seas, and that, when Columbus crossed the Atlantic and sighted land on the other side, he fancied he had reached the further coasts of the Indies. In consequence of this mistake of Columbus,' says Adam Smith1, 'the name of the Indies has stuck to those unfortunate countries ever since.' The islands, or some of them, have long 1 Wealth of Nations: chapter on 'The motives for establishing New Colonies.' |