It occurred under my own eyes when they were far younger than now, on a beautiful island in the Caribbean, some twelve hundred miles southeastward from Florida, the largest of the Virgin1 group--the island of the Holy Cross. Its natives called it Aye-Aye. Columbus piously2 named it Santa Cruz and bore away a number of its people to Spain as slaves, to show them what Christians4 looked like in quantity and how they behaved to one another and to strangers. You can hear much about Santa Cruz from anybody in the rum-trade.
It has had many owners. As with the woman in the Sadducee's riddle5, she of many husbands, seven political powers have had this mermaid6 as bride. Spain, the English, the Dutch, the Spaniards again, the French, the Knights7 of Malta, the French again, who sold her to the Guiana Company, who in 1734 passed her over to the Danes, from whom the English captured her in 1807 but restored her again at the close of Napoleon's wars. Thus, at last, Denmark prevailed as the ruling power; but English remained the speech of the people. The island is about twenty-three miles long by six wide. Its two towns are Christiansted on the north and Fredericksted on the south. Christiansted is the capital.
In 1848 I lived in Fredericksted, on Kongensgade, or King Street, with my aunts, Marion, Anna, and Marcia, and my grandmother--whom the servants called Mi'ss Paula--and was just old enough to begin taking care of my dignity. Whether I was Danish, British, or American I hardly knew. When grandmamma, whose husband had been of a family that had furnished a signer of our Declaration, told me stories of Bunker Hill and Yorktown I glowed with American patriotism8. But when she turned to English stories, heroic or momentous
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