Virgin Islands

“ Economy Virgin Islands Economy - overview: Tourism is the primary economic activity, accounting for 80% of GDP and employment. The islands normally host 2 million visitors a year. The manufacturing sector consists of petroleum refining, textiles, electronics, pharmaceuticals, and watch assembly. The agricultural sector is small, with most food being imported. International business and financial services are a small but growing component of the economy. One of the world's largest petroleum refineries is at Saint Croix. The islands are subject to substantial damage from storms. ”

“ First settled by the Dutch in 1648, the islands were annexed in 1672 by the English. The economy is closely tied to the larger and more populous US Virgin Islands to the west; the US dollar is the legal currency.
Geography British Virgin Islands Location: Caribbean, between the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, east of Puerto Rico Geographic coordinates: 18 30 N, 64 30 W Map references: Central America and the Caribbean Area: total: 153 sq km
note: comprised of 16 inhabited and more than 20 uninhabited islands ”

“ But there is a worse problem than that facing us in the Virgin Islands—the elimination of the habit of trying to live off the exertions of others. Thanks to their race, history, and situation, the islanders are inveterate, almost unconscious, beggars. ”

“ One hundred and thirty pounds of leaves are required to produce a quart of oil, which sells at present for six dollars, and has long had the reputation of being the best on the market. The bay-tree estates give occasional labor to the inhabitants, but their livelihood depends chiefly on their own little patches of tropical vegetables, their cattle, and their fishing. From the high points of the island one has an embracing view of the British Virgin Islands, separated from our own by only a few miles, and framed in the Caribbean like emeralds of fantastic shape in a setting of translucent blue. ”

“ Livestock raising is the most important agricultural activity; poor soils limit the islands' ability to meet domestic food requirements. Because of traditionally close links with the US Virgin Islands, the British Virgin Islands has used the dollar as its currency since 1959. ”

“ The Virgin Islands of the United States
to consider changing the territory’s relationship with the United States. Eighty percent voted to retain territorial status; however, the referendum was legally meaningless because more than 50 percent of the eligible voters had to participate, but only 27.4 percent did so. The Census Bureau treats the three main islands as the statistical equivalents of counties (see Table 7-4) , but they do not have their own governments. Nearby islands are included with the closest large island ”

“ One reason that the Virgin Islands is proving attractive to new industries is that under the present laws, manufacturers operating in the Virgin Islands pay an import duty of only 6 per cent on merchandise brought into the Islands for use in manufacturing. Their finished products are permitted into the mainland free of any duty—provided the foreign materials used are less than 50 per cent of the total value. ”

“ A man here might know the Virgin Islands, and perhaps most of the Leeward Islands, but he might not know anything east, west, or north of San Domingo. We should certainly want another pilot for the Bahamas, and a third for Cuba and the islands round it, which can be counted almost by the hundred. Then again, none of these would know the islands fringing almost the whole of the coast from Honduras to Trinidad. However, I hope we shall not have to search them. There is an ample cruising ground and any number of hiding places without having to go so far out of the world as that. ”

“ As others like them, of undoubted Carib workmanship, have been found in the Virgin Islands, it is possible that they are all the work of that once-powerful race, and not of the settled agricultural and statue-making Indians of the western part of the continent. ”

“ We were in need of a naval base to protect the Panama Canal, and the harbor at St. Thomas provides the best naval station in the West Indies.
The islands were discovered by Columbus in 1493, on his second voyage to the New World. Since then the inhabitants have been under Spanish, British, French, Dutch and Danish rule. For over two hundred years the Danish flag has flown above these islands of the Virgin group. Repeatedly the United States has tried to acquire them. In 1865 Secretary Seward offered five millions of dollars, which was increased two years later to $7,500,000. ”

“ While all was still unsettled between us, ‘Land’ was one day proclaimed from the mast-head. This announcement surprised us all, for we had not expected to see any land until we came in sight of the mountains of Hispaniola, which still lay well to the westward. However, we soon found that, either through currents or errors in the reckoning, we were further to the south than we had calculated, and that the island we saw was one of the Virgin Isles, forming a cluster just where the long line of windward islands which stretch northward from the mainland, trend away to the west. ”

“ Of the British portion of the group the principal are Tortola, Anegada, Virgin Gorda, Jost van Dyke, Peter’s Island and Salt Island, in all numbering 32, with an area of 58 sq. m. With the exception of the island of Sombrero they form one of the five presidencies in the colony of the Leeward Islands. The inhabitants are peasant proprietors, mainly engaged in raising cattle and in burning charcoal, but some are fishermen and boatmen. ”

“ These were purchased by the United States from Denmark and were formally transferred on March 31, 1917. Payment of $25,000,000 was made for these islands. The islands belonging to the United States have a total area of 132 square miles, and a population of about 27,000. There are three cities, Charlotte Amalie, on the island of St. Thomas; Christiansted and Frederiksted on the island of St. Croix. Agriculture is the chief occupation of the inhabitants. ”

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

“ They are mostly unproductive and uninhabited. Scarcely one-third of the area is in cultivation and occupied—about 270 square miles being inhabited by nearly 40,000 persons. The climate is comparatively healthful. There are two wet and two dry seasons. Hurricanes and earthquakes are somewhat frequent. In the geological formation figure chalk-limestone, serpentine, and eruptive stone. The coasts afford good fishing; nut trees abound in the forests; and there is fine pasturage. Among the exports are sugar, indigo, cotton, and salt. ”

“ Situated 1440 miles south of New York and 1025 miles from Colon, the northern entrance to the Panama Canal, the islands are ideally placed for a short sea voyage. The population in recent years has been diminishing, because of the loss of trade and the consequent falling-off of the number of ships in the harbor. ”

“ Croix, and that extends from Christiansted to Frederiksted at the west end of the island. A macadam road twenty-one miles in length connects the two towns, and over this highway passes practically all the traffic on the island. Here we see a curious procession of natives driving all kinds of queer vehicles drawn by diminutive ponies or donkeys.
Women carry upon their heads loads that would stagger the average man. They are able to balance almost anything, and one sees them carrying boxes, barrels, and even pianos, although the latter require about four women to balance their weight. ”

“ From the standpoint of one who has lived in the islands, I am frank to state that the ‘negro problem’ here will hardly be the problem—difficult of solution—which at first glance it seems to be; for while most of the leading merchants, tradesmen and minor officials are men in whose veins runs colored blood, they are often more courteous and considerate than those of white skin occupying similar position in America. Hospitality and good cheer abound everywhere, and the prevailing atmosphere is one of cheerfulness, now further stimulated by reason of the transfer to the United States. ”

“ There is but one harbor in the group that is especially fit for a naval base—Charlotte Amalie, on the south side of St. Thomas. By skill and care it could be made to accommodate a fleet large enough to occasion us grave concern. From a secure harbor for merchant steamers to a naval establishment and a military outpost, the path is neither hard nor long. It is wiser, however distasteful, to forestall any such manoeuver by a foreign power by buying the islands ourselves. ”

“ Thus Desceliers’ map of 1546163 (Fig. 9) , a museum of strangely-named sea islands, makes the latitude of “Maidas” 47° and the longitude that of St. Michaels, but not long afterward Nicolay (1560;164 Fig. 6) and Zaltieri (1566) 165 transferred the island to Newfoundland waters. Nicolay calls it “I man orbolunda,” and places it just south of the Strait of Belle Isle. It is accompanied by Green Island and by Brazil, a little farther out on the Grand Banks where the Virgin Rocks may still be found at low tide. Taken together these three islands look like parts of a disintegrated Newfoundland. ”

“ Croix. On April 7, 1917, the first governor of the islands, Rear Admiral Pollock, late Chief of Naval Intelligence, was officially welcomed and installed in office.
The inquiry, “Are the islands worth the expenditure of $25,000,000?”, is answered by present-day students of naval tactics. “We have at least the value of the twenty-five millions in these offensive times in keeping any foreign power from getting a foothold there. We have bought the finest site strategically, logistically and tactically for a first-class naval base on the Atlantic seaboard.” ”

“ Half the population was composed of slaves. To further increase their number, King Christian V of Denmark decreed that natives of Africa be brought across-seas in ships specially engaged in slave traffic. All the European countries that had undertaken to develop the agricultural resources of the West India Islands had found after repeated disasters that only black men were fitted to work in the tropics. Besides tobacco, estates were now planted with sugar cane, sprouts of which were obtained from Tortola, another island of the Virgin group, twenty miles east of St. ”

“ The most tantalizing archeological puzzle of the Pacific is Easter Island, with its strange images of stone, ancient dwellings and antediluvian caves. Dropped at haphazard in the sea, a thousand miles from anywhere, and owing a passive allegiance to the Chilean Government, Easter Island is one of the wonders of the world, and holds a secret that no man has yet read. ”

“ To-day it is all but unknown; its landlocked harbors are bare of ship or sail; its plantations are overgrown with bush; great forest trees have sprung from gardens and have hidden the crumbling remains of once stately residences; its forts are ruins.
St. John is one of the most fertile of the islands, the best by far of all the Virgins, incomparably superior to St. Thomas in point of scenery, climate, and resources, and worth more intrinsically than St. Thomas and St. Croix rolled into one, while Coral Bay is probably the safest and most commodious harbor in the Lesser Antilles. ”

“ But with its imposing groves of oak, its golden wealth of orange-trees, its odorous lanes of oleander.
its broad grazing-meadows yellow-starred with wild camomile, Grande Isle remains the prettiest island of the Gulf; and its loveliness is exceptional. For the bleakness of Grand Terre is reiterated by most of the other islands,—Caillou, Cassetete, Calumet, Wine Island, the twin Timbaliers, Gull Island, and the many islets haunted by the gray pelican,—all of which are little more than sand-bars covered with wiry grasses, prairie-cane, and scrub-timber. ”

“ The sloop then bore away and ran down, and we were truly rejoiced, fatigued, wet, hungry as we were, to stand again upon the deck.
Proceeding along to leeward of Martinico and St. Lucia, we came to St. Vincent, an island about twenty miles in length from north to south, which was chiefly remarkable at that time as being the only abiding place of the once numerous and warlike tribe of the Caribs, who inhabited the Windward Islands when the American continent was discovered, and were doomed, like all other tribes of their race, to wilt and die beneath the sun of civilization. ”

“ Nothing is more hotly disputed than the claims of the many beautiful islands among the numberless groups of the Pacific to the crown of supremest loveliness. Tahiti is awarded the apple of Paris by many, Honolulu by a few, Samoa by all who have been there and nowhere else. The few who have seen the quaint loveliness of Manahiki, or Humphrey Island, uphold its claims among the highest, and for myself, I have never been quite certain whether the low atoll islands are not more lovely than all else, because of their matchless colouring. ”

“ The idea of a phantom or vanishing island, too, is very old,—as old, doubtless, as the fact of fog-banks and mirage,—and it is well exemplified in those mysterious visions which enticed the sailors of Bristol to many a fruitless quest before the discovery of America, and for centuries tantalized the inhabitants of the Canaries with hope of discovery. The Atlantic islands were not all isles of the blessed ”

“ JERSEY If on a fine day we take our stand on one of the terraces, or battlements, of Mont Orgueil Castle—and there is hardly a pleasanter spot in Jersey in which to idle away a sunny summer afternoon—we shall realize more completely than geography books can tell us that the Channel Islands really constitute the last remnants of the ancient Norman dukedom that still belong to the English Crown. ”