Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 140, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 June 1916 — Danish West Indies [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Danish West Indies

IF THE United States and Denmark . strike a bargain and the three | islands which comprise the Danish . West Indies are transferred to the former, the sale will mark the culmination of a bit of bartering which began nearly fifty years ago, when the American government offered $7,500,000 for the 138 square miles of territory in the Antilles, a sum exceeding by $300,000 the price paid to Russia in the same year (1867) for the vast, rich territory of Alaska, comprising an area more than four thousand times as large. The sale was not consummated because the United States senate failed to ratify the treaty, says a bulletin of th©. National Geographic society. Fourteen years ago negotiations were renewed and a price of $5,000,000 was agreed upon, but this time the Danish parliament refused to sanction the sale, although the islands had been governed at a loss to the mother country for many years, in fact ever since •slavery was abolished in 1848, thereby putting an end to the profitable opera-

tion of the sugar plantations. These three islands of the Virgin groU p—St. Croix, St. Thomas and St. John, in the order of their size and population—were discovered by Columbus in 1493. Spanish, British, French, Dutch and Danish flags have floated over one or all of the islands at vari-

ous times. St. Croix, lying 65 miles southeast of Porto Rico, has an area of 84 square miles, and is the most prosperous of the group, with its two towns of Christlanstad and Frederikstad. It was held at one time by the Knights of Malta, having been given to that famous order by Louis XIV of France. St. Thomas Has Fine Harbor. St. Thomas, which lies only 40 miles east of Porto Rico, was at one time the chief distributing center of West Indian trade, its importance being directly attributable to the fact that the mother country, Denmark, maintained its neutrality during the numerous Eu-

ropean wars of the eighteenth century. The temporary occupation of the Island by the British during several periods of the Napoleonic wars added further to the importance of the chief port, Charlotte Amalie, where merchant vessels rode, at anchor in the magnificent landlocked harbor while waiting for convoys to protect them on the voyage across the Atlantic. This town of Charlotte Amalie, with a population of less than ten thousand, mainly negroes, is still an important coaling station for steamers in the West Indian trade. With a depth of from 27 to 36 feet of water, the roadstead can accommodate the largest merchant ships which sail these seas. The export and Import trade has become negligible since the rapid decline of the sugar industry which the Danish government has tried in vain to revive by granting annual subsidies. St. John Is the Smallest St John, least important of the islands, lying four miles to the east of St. Thomas, has an area of twen-ty-one square miles. It is scarcely more than a ten-mile mountain ridge with but one distinguishing feature, Coral bay, the best harbor of refuge in the Antilles. Cruxbay, a village of 1,000 inhabitants on the northern shore, is th© center of population. While Danish is the official language of the islands, English is quite gen-

erally spoken. The monotony of existence is not Infrequently broken by earthquakes and hurricanes. If Denmark decides to part with these islands there will remain to her only two colonial possessions—Greenland and Iceland, which have an aggregate area more than five times as largo as the mother country, but with only one-twenty-seventh the population. The 138 square miles of Denmark s West Indian territory sustain nearly three times as many people as the 46,740 square miles of Greenland.

Charlotte Amalie.