THE VIRGIN ISLANDSSt. Croix
FIVE
The island of Santa Cruz or Saint Croix (Holy Cross) was so named by the Spanish and the French who occupied it at different periods until the year 1733. As the Knights of Malta, under grant from Louis XIV, were for a decade in possession of this isolated domain, the name has interesting associations. Not long after St. Croix came under control of Denmark there was born on the island of Nevis, fifty miles away, the boy known to history as Alexander Hamilton, son of a Scotch merchant and a cultured lady of Huguenot descent. At his mother’s death the child was put in the care of relatives who lived on St. Croix. Before he reached his teens he was apprenticed in Frederiksted as a counting-house clerk to the firm of Nicholas Cruger. His youthful letters of business and friendship are distinguished by mature reasoning and elegant phrase. In November, 1769, when twelve years of age, he wrote a boy friend expressing impatience with “the grovelling condition of a clerk,” and avowed: “I would willingly risk my life, though not my character, to exalt my station.” The date, August 31, 1772, is memorable in St. Croix for a furious hurricane that endured a third of a day and made “the whole frame of nature seem as though unhinged and tottering to its fall.” The young clerk described this disastrous visitation in a letter addressed to his father on September 6th. “It seemed as if a total dissolution of nature was taking place,” he wrote. “The roaring of the sea and wind,—fiery meteors flying about in the air,—the prodigious glare of almost perpetual lightning,—the crash of falling houses, and the ear-piercing shrieks of the distressed, were sufficient to strike astonishment into angels. Misery in its most hideous shapes spread over the face of the country.” This letter, appearing in a newspaper, aroused such interest in the talents of the writer that a month later it was arranged for him to sail for the American Colonies and there continue his interrupted studies in a grammar-school near New York. Later, the youth entered King’s College, now Columbia University. At seventeen, having already allied himself with the interests of the Americans, he addressed with ardor and inventive argument a great meeting of patriots assembled in New York to act on the proposal to hold a general congress of colonial representatives.
In Hamilton’s boyhood, St. Croix, a sugar-producing island, shared the richest commerce of the West Indies. The first sugar plantations were laid out about the middle of the eighteenth century; towns named for Danish kings, Christian and Frederik, were plotted, and good roads built. The south side of the island is level and well adapted for agriculture. Here are many estates owned by corporations that operate sugar factories.
As a resort, St. Croix has much to commend it. The climate is warm and dry. The daily variation of extremes of temperature the year ’round is moderate. The winter and early summer months are the most agreeable for outdoor recreation. August and September are the hottest months, but prostrations from heat rarely occur. In an average year, the maximum temperature in summer is 92° F., and the minimum 74° F. The normal maximum winter temperature (in January) is 83° F., and the minimum 65° F. There is no malaria in either St. Croix or St. Thomas. The charming scenery of St. Croix is disclosed by pleasant roads that wind among the sugar plantations and up to the fields on the slopes, where a high-grade sea island cotton is successfully grown.
An English physician, long resident in the islands, styles St. Croix, “The Garden of the West Indies, on account of its superior cultivation, its beautiful homes and its fertility.” He says, “Its scenery is extremely varied. To the lovers of dark gloomy hills and large waste lagoons, the eastern part of the island offers many attractions. A rich, fruitful valley occupies the central and most southerly portion of the island. A drive through this, upon the splendid road that runs from Christiansted to Frederiksted, a distance of fifteen miles, will amply reward anyone who cares for picturesque scenery. On each side are cocoanut trees, sometimes varied by the areca palm. Between these and behind them may be seen sugar-fields, perhaps full of undulating cane ready for cutting. A manager’s house peeps out from a dark clump of mango and tamarind trees. Hard by is the negro laborers’ village. Cultivated to their very tops are many of the hills. A windmill here and there, and a glimpse now and then of the sea, complete a landscape not often seen outside of the tropics, and not often seen outside of St. Croix.”
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATIONILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 6. No. 13. SERIAL No. 161COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
PHOTOGRAPH BY E. M. NEWMANCOUNTRY ROAD. ST. CROIX. VIRGIN ISLANDS
PHOTOGRAPH BY E. M. NEWMAN
COUNTRY ROAD. ST. CROIX. VIRGIN ISLANDS