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West Indies   /wɛst ˈɪndiz/   Listen
West Indies

noun
1.
The string of islands between North America and South America; a popular resort area.  Synonym: the Indies.



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"West Indies" Quotes from Famous Books



... his mind not to abide at Queechy, which only held him now by the frail thread of Hugh's life. Mr. Carleton knew this, and had even taken some steps towards securing for him a situation in the West Indies. But it was unknown to Fleda; she had not heard her uncle say anything on the subject since she came home; and though aware that their stay was a doubtful matter, she still thought it might be as well to have the garden in order. Philetus could not be trusted to do everything ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... is not at all the thing that fancy painted it. The real Dead Man's Chest, however, as "W. L." explains it, is quite as alluring as the imaginary one and will appeal to the student of geographical peculiarities in the West Indies. ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock

... case of Washington the desire was only overcome at the solicitations of his mother. The mother of Marion, in like manner, strove to dissuade her son from this early inclination. She did not succeed, however, and when scarcely sixteen, he embarked in a small vessel for the West Indies. The particulars of this voyage, with the exception of the mode in which it terminated, have eluded our inquiry. We have looked for the details in vain. The name of the vessel, the captain, the port she sailed from, have equally escaped our search. To the wanton ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... came round too soon, and we had to start on another trip, and to tear ourselves away from all sorts of amusements, some of us from domestic ties: for there were instances of anxious wives who, having followed their husbands to the West Indies, vastly enjoyed all the novelty of the scene. These ladies had their pet ships, in whose captains they had confidence, and in which they sent private ventures into the Confederacy; and in this way some of them made a nice little addition ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... English counterpart in the north to the Spanish empire in the south. He had already begun to equip a couple of vessels. He despatched them to America on April 27, 1584, under Captains Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlow. They took the roundabout route by the Canaries and West Indies. In July they were saluted with a most fragrant gale from the land they were seeking. Sailing into the mouth of a river they saw vines laden with grapes, climbing up tall cedars. On July 13 they proclaimed the Queen's sovereignty, afterwards delivering the country over to the use of Ralegh. ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... we found to our dismay that the rudder was adrift, the pintles having been broken by the heavy seas. I was now compelled to put before the wind and run for St. Thomas, in the West Indies, and when near the entrance of the port a passenger, Captain George Adams, "went off his head," and thus gave no little addition to my anxieties. Finally we arrived safely in port. Here more troubles began. I was advised to do many things, some of which ...
— Notes by the Way in A Sailor's Life • Arthur E. Knights

... dominion of the late men in power, addresses had been procured from both Houses to the Queen, representing their opinion, that no peace could be secure for Britain, while Spain or the West Indies remained in the possession of the Bourbon family. But Her Majesty having, for reasons which have been often told to the world, and which will not soon be forgotten, called a new Parliament, and chose a new set of servants, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... the Surinam venture before the voyage of 1679, and it is noticeable that Danckaerts says he has been in the West Indies; p. 61, infra. But the little "book of saints" which has just been mentioned says, of a Juffrouw Huyghens, who died in January, 1680, a lady very zealous for the conversion of the Indians, that she said that "if any of us went out thither, she would wish ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts

... those lords and gentlemen who were prisoners, should be sold as slaves to Argiere, or sent to the new plantations in the West Indies, because he had contracted with two ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various

... that Mrs. Cliff was a widow of a storekeeper of the town, and that she had come into possession of a portion of a treasure which had been discovered somewhere in the West Indies or South America, but those portions of treasures which might be allotted to the widow of a storekeeper in a little country town were not likely to be very much, and Mrs. Buskirk was anxious to know something definite about ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton

... into a new Jersey. You will never speak of war, but you will not suffer any one to speak to you of it. With what war could they threaten us? With a naval war? But our commerce has only just started afresh, and the prey that we should afford the English would be scarcely worth while. Our West Indies are supplied with acclimatized soldiers! St. Domingo alone contains 25,000 of them. They might blockade our ports, it is true; but at the very moment of the declaration of war England would find herself blockaded in turn. The territory ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... Holland as one of the great colonial nations. Roughly, it has three divisions, devoted to the mother country, the Dutch East Indies, and the Dutch West Indies, in each of which industry and commerce is pictured in dioramas and exemplified by displays of products. Dutch girls in national costume serve visitors in the ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... being easily shot. "The best known case of reversion:" he continues, "and that on which the widely-spread belief in its universality apparently rests, is that of pigs. These animals have run wild in the West Indies, South America, and the Falkland Islands, and have everywhere re- acquired the dark colour, the thick bristles, and great tusks of the wild boar; and the young have re-acquired longitudinal stripes." And on page 22 of "Plants and Animals under Domestication" (vol. ii. ed. ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... another. The floras of distant continents would not by such means become mingled in any great degree; but would remain as distinct as we now see them to be. The currents, from their course, would never bring seeds from North America to Britain, though they might and do bring seeds from the West Indies to our western shores, where, if not killed by so long an immersion in salt-water, they could not endure our climate. Almost every year, one or two land-birds are blown across the whole Atlantic Ocean, from North America to the western ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... "Why do the Gentiles so furiously rage," saith the Prophet David, Psal. ii. 1. But we may ask, why do the Christians so furiously rage? [304]Arma volunt, quare poscunt, rapiuntque juventus? Unfit for Gentiles, much less for us so to tyrannise, as the Spaniard in the West Indies, that killed up in 42 years (if we may believe [305]Bartholomeus a Casa, their own bishop) 12 millions of men, with stupend and exquisite torments; neither should I lie (said he) if I said 50 millions. I omit those French massacres, Sicilian evensongs, [306]the ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... Protestant faith of which he had previously been the champion, Champlain, like other Frenchmen, who had followed the Duke of Guise, became an ardent supporter of the new regime and eventually a favourite of the Bernese prince. He visited the West Indies in a Spanish ship and made himself well acquainted with Mexico and other countries bordering on the Gulf. He has described all his voyages to the Indies and Canada in quaint quarto volumes, now very ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot

... the West Indies about 1793, daughter of a slave bought in Georgia on account of her great beauty; lived in the early part of the Restoration and during the Hundred Days in Hotel San-Real, rue Saint-Lazare, Paris, with her mother and her foster-father, Christemio. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... mean; we all call it the river down our way—between the river and the West Indies, with horses, cattle, and other knick-knacks of that description. Among others was old Joe Bunk, who had followed the trade in a high-decked brig for some twenty-three years, he and the brig having grown old in company, like man and wife. About forty years since, our river ladies ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... years residence amongst them. A man like Father Cooper was bad to follow; it was no easy matter putting his shoes on and walking in them regularly through the district; but his successor— Father Walker, who has seen something of the world, has done service in the West Indies, has fought with mosquitoes, confronted black and yellow fever, preached to dark men and soldiers, and made himself moderately acquainted with the hues and habits of butterflies, centipedes, and snakes, if the museum at Stonyhurst College ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... in that county. He took with him the younger of his two children, Peter Grant. The elder, Solomon, remained with his relatives in Connecticut until old enough to do for himself, when he emigrated to the British West Indies. ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant

... The Inquirer. They are now republished without undergoing any substantial alteration. The author however thinks it due to himself to state, that he would have materially qualified those parts of his essay which speak of the improved Condition of the Slaves in the West Indies since the abolition, had he then been acquainted with the recent evidence obtained upon that subject. His present conviction certainly is, that he has overrated that improvement, and that in point of fact Negro Slavery is, in its main and leading feature, the same ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson

... beset him, and fully convinced that his days were few and numbered, the seaman, who called himself Tom Daggett, had felt a desire to close his eyes in the place where they had first been opened to the light of day. He had persuaded the commander of the craft mentioned, to bring him from the West Indies, and to put him ashore as related, the Vineyard being only a hundred miles or so to the eastward of Oyster Pond Point. He trusted to luck to give him the necessary opportunity of overcoming these ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... ST. VINCENT. In 1902 two dormant volcanoes of the West Indies, Mt. Pelee in Martinique and Soufriere in St. Vincent, broke into eruption simultaneously. No lava was emitted, but there were blown into the air great quantities of ashes, which mantled the adjacent parts of the islands with a pall as of gray snow. In early stages of the eruption ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... and Mr. Brympton had now been a month absent. We heard he was cruising with a friend in the West Indies, and Mr. Wace said that was a long way off, but though you had the wings of a dove and went to the uttermost parts of the earth, you couldn't get away from the Almighty. Agnes said that as long as he stayed away from Brympton, the Almighty might have him and welcome; and this raised ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... Acquaintance and Friends to inhabit that fair and large Countery, went thither again with Ten Sailes, as I find noted by Guttun Owen.[h] I am of opinion that the Land whereunto he came was some part of the West Indies. ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams

... systems have been underestimated. It so happened that the races among whom the modern missionary enterprise has carried on its earlier work were mostly simple types of pagans, found in the wilds of America, in Greenland and Labrador, in the West Indies, on the African coast, or in the islands of the Pacific; and these worshippers of nature or of spirits gave a very different impression from that which the Apostles and the Early Church gained from their intercourse with the conquering Romans or the polished and philosophic Greeks. Our ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... of England did not have one bishop beyond its shores. There are to-day fifteen bishops in Africa, six in China and Japan, and twenty-three in Australia and the Pacific Islands, ten in India, seven in the West Indies, and eighty-five in British North America and the United States. Every colony of the British Empire and every State and Territory of the United States has its own bishop, ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple

... of art, and well deserves the thanks of mankind. The cook too enlivens the consultation by telling marvellous stories about strange dishes he has seen. He has eaten serpents with the Siamese, monkeys in the West Indies, crocodiles and sloths in South America, and cats, rats, and dogs with the Chinese; and of course, as nobody can contradict him, says they are delicious. Like a salmon, you must give him the line, even if it wearies you, before you bag him; but when you do bring him to land his dishes ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... West Indies) was submerged, at the close of the seventeenth century, sailors in those parts for many years had {414} stories of anchoring in the chimneys and steeples, and would declare they heard the church bells ringing beneath the water, agitated by the waves or spirits ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various

... I have travelled upwards of five thousand miles on foot and more than twenty thousand in other ways; have visited nineteen States of this Union, and held more than two hundred public meetings; have performed two voyages to the West Indies, by which means the emancipation of a considerable number of slaves has been effected, and I hope the way paved for ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... HE WAS. The astonished inhabitants of the island soon gathered to see the strange sight—the landing of white men in the West Indies. They looked upon the ships as sea-monsters, and the white men as gods. Nor was Columbus less puzzled by what he saw. The people were a strange race—cinnamon colored, naked, greased, and painted to suit each one's fancy. They had only the rudest means of self-defense, and ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton

... war would inevitably follow; but Mirabeau believed that civil war would lead to the restoration of authority, if the king put himself in the hands of the Marquis de Bouille, the general commanding at Metz. Bouille had acquired a high reputation by his success against the English in the West Indies, and he increased it at this moment by the energy with which he suppressed a mutiny in the garrison of Nancy. For the service thereby rendered to the State and the cause of order, he received, under pressure from Mirabeau, the ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... provision of English growth, as has been observed already; and up the river, everything that the coasts and the maritime counties of England, Scotland, or Ireland afford; this way also are received the treasures and merchandise of the East and West Indies, and indeed of the four quarters ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales

... "Every arrival from the West Indies but strengthens our conviction, that there never will be happiness, security, or peace for the emancipated negroes, so long as the administration of the laws, and the management of the plantations, are continued in the hands of those white officials ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... see that Sir Benjamin Blowhard, old Grummet, poor Marlin, and Kelson, Lord Figgins, as we used to call him, Dick Dotheboys, and Oakum, have gone the way of all flesh. I saw by yesterday's paper that Bulkhead had died in the West Indies, and two other captains senior to Murray ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... gifted author which is best remembered, and which will be read with pleasure for many years to come, is "Captain Brand," who, as the author states on his title page, was a "pirate of eminence in the West Indies." As a sea story pure and simple, "Captain Brand" has never been excelled, and as a story of piratical life, told without the usual embellishments of blood and ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth

... Philadelphia, Pittsburgh had a riot in 1839 resulting in the maltreatment of a number of Negroes and the demolishing of some of their houses. When the Negroes of Philadelphia paraded the city in 1842, celebrating the abolition of slavery in the West Indies, there ensued a battle led by the whites who undertook to break up the procession. Along with the beating and killing of the usual number went also the destruction of the New African Hall and the ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson

... finding gold and other commodities, which till then had never been brought from the Indies, he really thought that this was the west coast of that country to which the Portuguese sailed by the Cape of Good Hope, and hence came the name of the West Indies. Magellan, who followed his steps, and was the only discoverer who reasoned systematically, and knew what he was doing, proposed to the Emperor Charles V. to complete what Columbus had begun, and to find a passage to the Moluccas by the west; which, to ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton

... Parliament, that he knew the Maroons, from personal knowledge, to be cannibals, and that, if a missionary were sent among them in Nova Scotia, they would immediately eat him; a charge so absurd that he did not venture to repeat it in his History of the West Indies, though his injustice to the Maroons is even there so glaring as to provoke the indignation of the more moderate Dallas. But, in spite of Mr. Edwards, the public indignation ran quite high, in England, against the bloodhounds and their employers, so that the home ministry found it necessary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... alarm caused by negro insurrections in the West Indies, prepared the public mind for positive action, as the year approached when Congress might constitutionally prohibit the foreign slave trade. The Act of March 2, 1807, however, only partially met the expectations of the anti-slavery people. The ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... the English Channel, France, Marseilles, the Mediterranean Sea, Rome, Nice, Egypt, Austria, Transylvania, Turkey, Constantinople, Sea of Azov, Russia, Paris, Spain, London. Trace the course of John Smith's first voyage to America. Find the West Indies, Florida, the Carolinas, Chesapeake ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey

... am obliged to start for the West Indies, and must dispose of all. The present instructors are thoroughly competent for their various positions; they merely need a supervisor. You appear young, but I presume experience has fitted you for ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn

... me about this Antonio Thorpe, who had been under his guardianship for six years. He was the son of an Englishman who had married a Spanish girl in the West Indies: the lad was but twelve years old when he was thrown upon the world without parents or near relatives or suitable provision for his maintenance. The elder Thorpe had been a careless, good-natured person, without any ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... north, and within a week was in the track of the Spanish merchantmen plying between the West Indies and Spain, and was picked up by one of these vessels ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... a moment," he declared, amid impressive silence, "on the state of the Empire. America, that vast Continent, with all its advantages to us as a commercial and maritime people—lost—for ever lost to us; the West Indies abandoned; Ireland ready to part from us. Ireland, my lords, is armed; and what is her language? 'Give us free trade and the free Constitution of England as it originally was, such as we hope it will remain, the best calculated of any in the world ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... Dresden left at large on the high seas, so far as was known, only the German cruiser Karlsruhe, last reported as operating in the West Indies, and the auxiliary cruiser Kronprinz Wilhelm, which was still raiding commerce in the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... recognized him, and determined to recover possession of the slave, again rendered valuable by the restoration of his health. The lawyer employed two of the Lord Mayor's officers to apprehend Strong, and he was lodged in the Compter, until he could be shipped off to the West Indies. The negro, bethinking him in his captivity of the kind services which Granville Sharp had rendered him in his great distress some years before, despatched a letter to him requesting his help. Sharp had forgotten the name of Strong, but he sent a messenger to make inquiries, who returned ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... Dutch and granted letters of marque and reprisals. There has been a complete change in the Spanish Ministry. There has been a treaty made between France and the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The French fleet is in the West Indies and has taken possession of Guadeloupe. All French emigrants in Switzerland have been ordered to remove ten leagues from the borders of France. A hundred and fifty thousand Austrians are hurrying down toward the Rhine, to be reinforced by ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... of enormous wealth—a tobacco-merchant—West Indies; a fellow of no birth, however; and who, between ourselves, married a woman that is not much better than she should be. My dear sir," whispered he, "she is always in love. Now it is with that Captain Dobble; last week it was somebody else—and it may be you next week, ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray

... an appointment as District Adjutant General, and had him make his headquarters at Mount Vernon, where he immediately began to drill the raw recruits of the countryside. But in the midst of these military operations Lawrence fell ill and had to make a sea voyage to the West Indies, taking his young brother George with him ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland

... the negroes of the West Indies "Obi" is the name of a magical power, supposed to affect men with all the curses of an ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... notebook. 'Pavia—that's the Argentine man—started last month for Europe. He transhipped from a coasting steamer in the West Indies and we've temporarily lost track of him, but he's left his hunting-ground. What do you ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... was talking of turtles of good size, jumped up suddenly, "Did you ever see a terrapin, Sir?" and then walked round the long dining-table to tell how big he was and how high he stood on his feet. "When I was in the West Indies, Sir——Wish I could creep into a good English hay-mow and pay somebody to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... the efforts of the Americans to get possession of the Texas; and if the British government be alive to the interests of the nation, they never shall;—for, entertaining the hostile feelings that they do towards the British empire, their closer connexion with the West Indies ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... his mind. He supposed he had landed on some islands off the east coast of Asia, and as that coast was called the Indies, and as the islands were reached by sailing westward, they came to be called the West Indies, and their inhabitants Indians; and the native races of the New World have ever since been called Indians. Although Columbus in after years made three more voyages to the New World, he never found out his mistake, and died firm ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... Burroughs of whom I have any trace came from the West Indies, and settled in Stratford, Connecticut, where he married in 1694. He had ten children, of whom the seventh was John, born in August, 1705. My descent does not come from this John, but from his eldest brother, Stephen, who was born at Stratford in February, 1695. Stephen had eight children, and ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... foolishly, and unfairly. I am in favor of obtaining the Sandwich Islands—of course by fair means. I favor this policy because I want my country to become a power in the Pacific. All my life I have wanted this country to own the West Indies, the Bermudas, the Bahamas and Barbadoes. They are our islands. They belong to this continent, and for any other nation to take them or claim them was, and is, a ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... have passed much more easily abroad. I remember, one fine day at sea, in the West Indies, a boat was lowered down, and sent with a young midshipman (whose time was not fairly served, and whose age and appearance indicated anything but nautical knowledge) to a ship then in company; in a quarter of an hour he ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... well-to-do and the humble mounds and simple slabs where the poor were sleeping; past the sumptuous granite shaft of the Atkins lot and the tilted mossy stone which told how "Edwin Simpson, our only son," had been "accidentally shot in the West Indies"; out through the back gate and up the hill to the pine grove overlooking the bay. Here, on a scented carpet of pine needles, they sat them ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... West Indies, his absence would heighten the probability of Nancy's detection. Yet he desired to escape from her. Not to abandon her; of that thought he was incapable; but to escape the duty—repulsive to his imagination—of encouraging her through ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... eastward, gallantly assaulted by the smaller and slower Gloucester off Cape Matapan, until they reached the Dardanelles and took the Turkish Government under their charge. Out in the Atlantic the swift Karlsruhe caused some anxiety till she was wrecked in the West Indies, and the Geier was interned at Honolulu by the United States. A few converted merchantmen also pursued a brief career as raiders: the Cap Trafalgar was disposed of in a spirited action by the converted Cunarder Carmania ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... instincts of delicacy, had made her prefer to a journey to Italy, Jacqueline, having nothing better to do, took it into her head to write to her friend Fred. The young man received three letters at three different ports in the Mediterranean and in the West Indies, whose names were long associated in his mind with delightful and cruel recollections. When the first was handed to him with one from his mother, whose letters always awaited him at every stopping-place, the blood flew to his face, his heart beat violently, he could have cried ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... Austria-Hungary, Denmark, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Roumania, Spain, Norway, Sweden and Japan all together and, besides that, claim authority to say, through the Monroe Doctrine, what shall happen or shall not happen in South America, Mexico, the West Indies and the Pacific? How did the United States get this authority and this vast territory? How did Russia get her vast territory? How did England ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett

... I was reading Romance, by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Hueffer. It is a glorious tale of piracy and adventure in the West Indies; but for the moment I wondered how it came about that Conrad, the master of psychology, should have helped to write such a book. And then I understood. For these boys who hate the war, and suffer and endure ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey

... along the Atlantic Coast because of the uncertain plans of the main Spanish fleet, which had left the Cape Verde Islands, under Admiral Cervera, on April 29, and which might appear off New York or Boston at any time. The naval strategists knew it must be headed for the West Indies, but seaboard Congressmen begged excitedly for protection, and the sensational newspapers pictured the coast in ruins ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... Part of that district was so barren and desolate that it was said, "it had not water enough to drown a man, trees enough to hang him, or earth enough to bury him." Thousands were compelled to go into this dreary exile, and hundreds of families who refused were shipped to the West Indies and sold to the planters as slaves for a term of years,—a thing often done in that day with ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... to let me deal with him," said Pearson, who was a true soldier of fortune, and had been a buccaneer in the West Indies, "I think that, by a whipcord twitched tight round their forehead, and twisted about with a pistol-but, I could make either the truth start from their lips, or the eyes ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... eighteen he had a fit of sickness, and upon his recovery went to Australia for his health, and thence to Van Diemen's Land and New Zealand. He passed some time in the latter country, and then began a long series of wanderings, in the course of which he visited the East and West Indies, Mexico,—where he conducted Italian opera,—and the United States. He remained in New York a considerable period, and gave concerts which were very remunerative. In 1846 he returned to Europe, and shortly afterwards his pretty little opera, ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton

... in New York, in the Home Mission study class a young colored man from the West Indies gave a practical illustration of individual missionary effort of the kind that would evangelize the foreigners, if it were generally practiced. He said that every Thursday, when the steamer from the West Indies arrives, he arranges his work so as to be ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose

... the native African, converted and trained in his own land, has behind him only the few years of his own life separating him from the densest degradation of heathenism; the African born and converted in the West Indies has been a freedman only since 1840; and the American Negro was perhaps himself a slave, and his race had the shackles struck from their bodies only in 1863, while the fetters of ignorance and vice still manacle the minds and hearts of the mass. We ought not, therefore, so much to wonder ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various

... to see you looking so bright and blooming, my dear Mrs Murray!" exclaimed the old admiral, shaking her warmly by the hand; "it shows that the Highland air agrees with you, notwithstanding your long sojourn in the West Indies." ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... power of diving and swimming, and from his compatriots soon acquired various names indicative of his capacity. He became very well known throughout Sicily, and for his patron had Frederick, King of Naples. In the present day, the sponge-fishers and pearl-fishers in the West Indies, the Mediterranean, the Indian Seas, and the Gulf of Mexico invite the attention of those interested in the anomalies of suspended animation. There are many marvelous tales of their ability to remain under water for long periods. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... Beardsley is not and never has been a trader. He's a smuggler between this country and Cuba. He says himself that he never made a voyage farther away from home than the West Indies. He knows every inch of ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon

... the New England coast. Christopher Columbus, a Genoese in the Spanish service, discovered San Salvador, one of the Bahama Islands, on October 12, 1492. He thought that he had found the western route to the Indies, and, therefore, called his discovery the West Indies. In 1507, the new continent received its name from that of Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine who had crossed the ocean under the Spanish and Portuguese flags. The middle ages were Closing; the great nations of Europe were putting forth their energies, material and immaterial; ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... whole system of which through the globe, your High Mightinesses are too perfect masters for me to say any thing that is not familiarly known. It may not, however, be amiss to hint, that the central situation of this country, her extensive navigation, her possessions in the East and West Indies, the intelligence of her merchants, the number of her capitalists, and the riches of her funds, render a connection with her very desirable to America: and, on the other hand, the abundance and variety of the productions of America, ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams

... was completed the atmosphere grew suddenly dark, the heat became oppressive, and an unusual stillness presaged the immediate setting in of the monsoon. The whole appearance of nature resembled those solemn preludes to earthquakes and hurricanes in the West Indies, from which the east in general is providentially free. We were allowed very little time for conjecture; in a few minutes the heavy clouds burst over us.... I witnessed seventeen monsoons in India, but this exceeded them all in its awful ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various

... those of the great maritime powers, would at least be of respectable weight if thrown into the scale of either of two contending parties. This would be more peculiarly the case in relation to operations in the West Indies. A few ships of the line, sent opportunely to the reinforcement of either side, would often be sufficient to decide the fate of a campaign, on the event of which interests of the greatest magnitude were suspended. Our ...
— The Federalist Papers

... Mesopotamia, Salonica, the Cameroons and German East Africa. The larger portion of these armies has naturally been drawn from the United Kingdom, but large contingents have come from Canada, Australia, India, South Africa and the West Indies. None of these movements of troops would have been possible unless we had secured the command of the sea. In addition, our sea supremacy has enabled us to maintain our commerce with the whole of the world, while blocking ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.

... in the interim. An opulent enough, most silent, strictly regular, strange little Town. The women are in uniform; wives, maids, widows, each their form of dress. Missionaries, speaking flabby English, who have been in the West Indies or are going thither, seem to abound in the place; male population otherwise, I should think, must be mainly doing trade elsewhere; nothing but prayers, preachings, charitable boarding-schooling ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... churches were small and scattered; money was scarce; Christian benevolence was little understood. The wide world of Christian effort opened to us was almost wholly closed against them. They could enter the South Seas; though their islands were almost unknown. But the West Indies were close shut. "If you preach to the slaves," said the Governor of Demerara to a missionary, "I cannot let you stay here." They were excluded from South Africa and from India. China was sealed, and remained so for forty years. Passages were expensive; voyages were full of discomfort; ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various

... countries; [Footnote: Cf. Babcock, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xvi.] but England reserved her right to exempt her American possessions from this reciprocity. By excluding the ships of the United States from the trade with the English West Indies, England denied a profitable avocation to American ship-owners; while, at the same time, the liberal arrangements of the United States permitted her vessels freely to enter the ports of this country with their cargoes of English manufactures, and to carry thence to the West Indies lumber, flour, ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... count of time here. But it is somewhere about ten years. I am sturdy, you see. Three years at most is the average of our life in the galleys, though there are plenty die before as many months have passed. I come of a hardy race. I am not a Spaniard. I was captured in an attack on a town in the West Indies, and had three years on board one of your galleys at Cadiz. Then she was captured by the Moors, and here I have ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... 29, 1886, was total during about four minutes over tropical Atlantic regions; and an English expedition, led by Sir Norman Lockyer, was accordingly despatched to Grenada in the West Indies, for the purpose of using the opportunity it offered. But the rainy season was just then at its height: clouds and squalls were the order of the day; and the elaborately planned programme of observation could only in part be carried through. Some good work, none the less, was done. Professor ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... effectually obstructed by the necessity of an open water communication with the Bristol Channel. At one period (i. e. when as yet Liverpool and Glasgow were fifth-rate ports), all the wealth of the West Indies flowed into England through this little muddy ditch of the Bristol Avon, and Rownham Ferry became the exponent and measure of English intercourse with the northern nook of Somersetshire. A river is bad; but when a mountain of very toilsome ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... season we may catch a storm from the West Indies, Mr. Rackham," said Captain Wellsby. "The sea has a greasy look and this heavy ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... had carefully dyed a glossy black. His dress was extremely neat, and in his whole appearance there was a rigidity which did not belie his character. He had spent his early life in the army—at Gibraltar, in Canada, in the West Indies—and, under the influence of military training, had become at first a disciplinarian and at last a martinet. In 1802, having been sent to Gibraltar to restore order in a mutinous garrison, he was recalled for undue severity, and his active ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... [Footnote: Columbus's will] It was reported all through Europe that the Genoese captain had "discovered the coast of the Indies," and "found that way never before known to the East." [Footnote: Ramusio, Raccolta de Navigazioni, I, 414] The name West Indies still remains as a testimony to the belief of the early explorers that they had found the ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... Benedict Arnold. Mr. Hawke rehearsed the British armament in the Western Hemisphere, and counted the guns in Halifax, Montreal, Quebec, Esquimalt, to say nothing of the Bermudas, the Bahamas, and the British West Indies. He pointed out that England already possessed a fighting fleet on the Great Lakes which wanted nothing but the guns—and those could be mounted in a day—to make them capable of burning a fringe ten miles wide along the whole lake coast of the United States. Buffalo, Detroit, ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... on;—"When I lived in the West Indies, the children of the slaves, about my house, were treated with great kindness and indulgence. They would come about my table at dessert, and often had little presents given them. So they grew into objects of affection. But, out of several, some, of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... he is so mum about, bless ye!" said Sir Jeoffry. "And that is not a thing to be hid long. He is to be shortly married, they say. My lady, his mother, has found him a great fortune in a new beauty but just come to town. She hath great estates in the West Indies, as well as a fine fortune in England—and all the world is besieging her; but Jack hath come and bowed sighing before her, and writ some verses, and borne ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... a very great favour—to be allowed to call on you some day in London, and to see your insects? I and my daughter are soon, I hope, going to the West Indies, for plants and insects, among other things; and the young lady might learn much of typical forms from one glance ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... that stayeth at home can by relation of the traveller; yet both ways suffice to make a mutual knowledge, in some degree, on both parts. But for this island, we never heard tell of any ship of theirs, that had been seen to arrive upon any shore of Europe; no, nor of either the East or West Indies, nor yet of any ship of any other part of the world, that had made return for them. And yet the marvel rested not in this. For the situation of it (as his lordship said) in the secret conclave of such a vast sea might cause it. But then, that they should have knowledge of the languages, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... one Canto I left the United States for the West Indies in the hope of being able to sail thence for Great Britain, where I might submit what I had done to the candour of some able writer; publish it, if thought expedient; and obtain advice and materials for the improvement and prosecution of my work. But as events have transpired to frustrate ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks

... concert with duchesses, which is one of the besetting sins of the literary circles in London. One name did surprise me, ——, considering that one of her husband's happiest bits, in the book of his that will live, was the subscription for sending flannel waistcoats to the negroes in the West Indies; and that in this present book a certain Mrs. Jellyby is doing just what his wife is doing at ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... could not help laughing as he looked up at the girl through his spectacles. He pinched her cheek, and said that there was certainly more colour there than was common in the West Indies; but that it must fade, in or out of the convent, by the time she was twenty; and she had better be in a place where she was safe. The convent was the ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... of this year, the marshaling of belligerent forces by sea and land from the shores of Europe and America, with orders to rendezvous at a favorable maneuvering point in the West Indies, caused much conjecture as to the object in view. That the War Department of the English Government meditated a winter campaign somewhere upon the southern coasts of the United States was a common belief; that an invasion of Louisiana and the capture and ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith

... the end of October, and the firm remove the new wine to their cellars at Creuznach early in the ensuing spring, and bottle it in the May or June following. They make both dry and sweet varieties of sparkling wines, and their principal markets are England, Germany, the East and West Indies, the United States, ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... however, very short; though that of the plantain might with care be prolonged; oranges abound in winter, and are excellent, but neither so large nor free of white pulp as those of the Khasia hills, the West Indies, or the west coast of Africa. Mangos are brought from the plains, for though wild in Sikkim, the cultivated kinds do not thrive; I have seen the pine-apple plant, but I never met ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... Lord George Poynings, under a threat of publishing his correspondence with Lady Lyndon, and so preventing his Lordship's match with Miss Driver, a great heiress, of strict principles, and immense property in slaves in the West Indies. Barry narrowly escaped being taken prisoner by the bailiffs who were despatched after him by his lordship, who would have stopped his pension; but Lady Lyndon would never consent to that act of justice, and, indeed, broke with my Lord George the very moment he married ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... resembles the painful subordination of Ireland, is that vessels, trading to the West Indies, are obliged to pass by their own ports, and unload their cargoes at Copenhagen, which they afterwards reship. The duty is indeed inconsiderable, but the navigation being dangerous, they ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... correspondence on the subject of the interference of the colonial authorities of the British West Indies with American merchant vessels driven by stress of weather or carried by violence into ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... Americans at Bladensburg with a volley and a shout, kilted Highlanders, famous regiments which had earned the praise of the Iron Duke in the Spanish Peninsula, and brawny negro detachments recruited in the West Indies. It was such an army as would have been considered fit to withstand the finest troops in Europe. In command was one of England's most brilliant soldiers, General Sir Edward Pakenham, of whom Wellington had said, "my partiality for ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine

... town had been so well concealed that the Spaniards had believed that the British men-of-war were destined for the West Indies, and had thought that the merchantmen would have fallen easy prizes to their squadron, which ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty

... slavery;" and it contained various provisions, giving further protection to the apprentices, and enforcing such regulations of the former act as had been disregarded by the planters. The second bill empowered her majesty in council to make rules for the government of the prisons in the West Indies; to appoint inspectors of prisons; to dismiss or suspend officers; and to determine on the fitness or unfitness of any place to be used for the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... (Hibiscus Rosa-Sinensis), cultivated in greenhouses here, eclipse it in the beauty of the individual blossom. This latter flower, whose superb scarlet corolla stains black, is employed by the Chinese married women, it is said, to discolor their teeth; but in the West Indies it sinks to even greater ignominy as a dauber ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... may remember, was one of the first prizes captured in the Spanish War. She had been a Spanish merchant ship, the Rita, trading between Spain and all Spanish ports in the West Indies, and when captured by the Yale, early in April, 1898, was on her way to Havana with a cargo of goods. There is little about her now, however, to suggest a Spanish coaster, save the old bell marked "Rita" in front of the captain's cabin. The sight of this bell always brings to mind the ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel

... the problems of rural life are being watched by economists and administrators abroad. Enquirers have come to Ireland during the last two years from Germany, France, Canada, the United States, India, South Africa, Cyprus and the West Indies, having been drawn here by the desire to understand the combination of economic and human reform. It was not alone the economic advantages of the movement which interested them, but the way in which the organisation ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett

... banishing all dissenting clergymen from their parishes. By the so-called Conventicle Act of 1664 he tried to prevent the Dissenters from attending religious meetings by a threat of deportation to the West Indies. This looked too much like the good old days of Divine Right. People began to show the old and well-known signs of impatience, and Parliament suddenly experienced difficulty in providing the King ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... argument in favour of the negro who was then claiming his liberty in Scotland. He hated slavery with a zeal which the excellent Boswell thought to be "without knowledge;" and on one occasion gave as a toast to some "very grave men" at Oxford, "Here's to the next insurrection of negroes in the West Indies." The hatred was combined with as hearty a dislike for American independence. "How is it," he said, "that we always hear the loudest yelps for liberty amongst the drivers of negroes?" The harmony ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... the whole was diffused, as the scent of flowers through summer air, a moral meaning—a sentimental beauty, which sweetened and sanctified all. The poet's expectations from this little venture were humble: he hoped as much money from it as would pay for his passage to the West Indies, where he proposed to enter into the service of some of the Scottish settlers, and help to manage the double mystery of ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... pigment, though it is more commonly employed as a medicinal drug. It is brought from the East and West Indies in a sort of cane, in which it is naturally produced. As a pigment it is deep, transparent, of an imperfect citrine colour, inclining to dark green, and diffusible in water without grinding, like gamboge and sap green. Once sparingly used in water as ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... the poet, was the third of that name. The first Robert Browning, a man of energy and ability, held an important post in the Bank of England. His wife, Margaret Tittle, was a Creole from the West Indies, and at the time of her marriage her property was still in the estates owned by her father near St. Kitts. When their son, the second Robert, was seven years of age, his mother died, and his father afterwards married again. The second wife's ascendency over her husband was unfortunately ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... Colonies included Louisiana, Florida, Texas, California, Mexico, Cuba, Central America, most of the West Indies, and most of South America, not to mention the Philippines. These colonies covered a territory stretching over five thousand miles from North to South. Twice a year Spain sent out her trading-ships, convoyed by armed cruisers. Trade then was monopoly and extortion. The goods sent out were as cheap ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... Captain William Dobbin, of His Majesty's Regiment of Foot, returned from yellow fever, in the West Indies, to which the fortune of the service had ordered his regiment, whilst so many of his gallant comrades were reaping ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... exploits of Jones was performed in the autumn of 1776. He saw an American brig returning from the West Indies, heavily laden with supplies for Washington's army, which was badly in need of them. A British frigate was in hot pursuit of the American, which was straining every nerve to escape, but would not have been able to do so except for Jones, who ran in between the two, and, firing into the frigate, ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis

... is synonymous with the hurricane or tornado of the West Indies, as the monsoon may be said to assimilate with the trade-winds of the opposite hemisphere; but this "strong wind" blows with even more violence, and has a circular motion. Ships have had their masts bodily twisted out of them, and many, more unfortunate, have been ingulfed in the maelstrom ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... and with a repulsive face, blind in one eye, it was hard for him to get a start. But he was not the man to give up. He had begun as a cabin boy at thirteen, and for nine years sailed between Bordeaux and the French West Indies. He improved every leisure minute at sea, mastering ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... well known that the father of Dumas was a Negro of the French West Indies, and that the father of Coleridge-Taylor was a native-born African; but the facts concerning Pushkin's African ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson

... German corporations in Latin America, as well as the episode that immediately occasioned it; nor can there be much doubt that it was the secret interference by Germany at Copenhagen that thwarted the sale of the Danish West Indies to ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

... neither turned music-teacher, dancing-master, hair-dresser, nor teacher of the French language. He had a little money, and he embarked in commerce. He went as super-cargo, and then as travelling partner in a house to America, the Havannah, and the West Indies; and, after having crossed the Atlantic about twenty times in the course of the late war, he amassed a fortune of about 40,000 pounds. At the restoration, he went to Paris, resumed his title, which he had laid ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... to bring about the return of this grandfather? He will be the first of his company to return from the West Indies. ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac

... population of 80 millions, of which a fourth are negroes, aborigines, and half-caste; the divisions are British North America, United States, Mexico, Central American Republics, British Honduras, the West Indian Republics, and the Spanish, British, French, and Dutch West Indies. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... the buccaneers,—desperate, merciless, and insatiate in their lust for plunder. So numerous did they finally become, that no merchant dared to send a ship to the West Indies; and the pirates, finding that they had fairly exterminated their game, were fain to turn landwards for further booty. It was an Englishman that showed the sea rovers this new plan of pillage; one Louis Scott, who descended upon the town of Campeche, and, after stripping ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... Lucas did not live in Car-o-li-na. He was gov-ern-or of one of the islands of the West Indies. Miss Lucas was fond of trying new things. She often got seeds from her father. These she planted in ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston

... berries which are not quite so handsome as the red, though very attractive. R. humilis differs from lvis in having hairy leaves, those of lvis being quite smooth. It also differs in the duller red color of the berries, lvis being much the prettier. Both are natives of the West Indies.—R.I.L., in The Garden. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various

... same time las Antillas, the West Indies atropellar por, to infringe, to trample upon, also to run down (vehicles, etc.) blando, gentle, soft chaconada, jacconet ciencia, science, wisdom corto, short, brief desarme, disarmament deseoso, wishful, eager dique, dock doctrina, ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano

... each other in many respects they are not related botanically, sweet potatoes being root rather than tuber vegetables. Sweet potatoes are of a tropical nature and have been cultivated for hundreds of years in the West Indies and Central America. They form a staple article of diet in the southern part of the United States, where, on account of the warm climate, they are raised abundantly. They are not raised in the North; still they are consumed there in large quantities. After maturing, sweet potatoes are ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... Slightly bad news. Appears there is trouble in the Island of Piccolo Domingo. Looked it up on map. Is one of the smaller West Indies. We don't own it. I imagine Roosevelt must have overlooked it. An American has been in trouble there: was refused a drink after closing time and burnt down saloon. Is now in jail. Shall send at once our latest battleship—the Woodrow—new design, ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock

... mean changed, in the sense you are thinking of, uncle. But we will not talk of this now. Why should Roswell stop in the West Indies at all? It is not usual for ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... had been a romance. It was not from Scotland that the impulse came but from Jamaica in the West Indies. The slave population of that colony had been brought from the West Coast, and chiefly from the Calabar region, and although ground remorselessly in the mill of plantation life they had never forgotten their old home. When emancipation came and they ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... could restore a just balance of power in Europe, but the reducing the whole Spanish monarchy to the obedience of the House of Austria; and ... That no peace can be honourable or safe, for your Majesty or your allies, if Spain, the West Indies, or any part of the Spanish Monarchy, be suffered to remain under the power of the House of Bourbon." The resolutions as carried in the House of Lords on December 19th did not include the words "or any part of the Spanish Monarchy"; these words ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... book which I wrote some few years since, I expressed an opinion as to the probable destiny of this race in the West Indies. I will not now go over that question again. I then divided the inhabitants of those islands into three classes—the white, the black, and the colored, taking a nomenclature which I found there prevailing. By colored men I alluded ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... be understood that at this time the seven great countries of North America—Greenland, Norland (formerly British America, British Columbia, and Alaska), Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central America, and West Indies—were united under one confederated government, and had one flag, a modification of the banner ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... world was filled with wonder and delight, but no one had an idea of the real importance of the discovery. The opinion of Columbus was universally adopted that Cuba was the end of Asia; the islands were named the West Indies, and the vast region was called ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... Superintendent of Liberated Africans, and Commissioner of Arbitration in the Mixed Court of Justice at Havana. His various experiences and observations, during eight years of official and private life in America, the West Indies, and Africa, led to the composition of several tracts on the slave-trade, and a volume printed we think some two years ago on "the Island of Cuba, its Resources, Progress, and Prospects." The "Infirmities of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... o'clock in the mornin', for he looked at his watch and at the clock of the house, and heard it ring in the town, just as the thieves cleared off over the wall. Now, if I can get your old skipper to take a run here on his return from the West Indies, he'll swear that you was sailin' out to the North Sea before twelve, and that'll prove that you couldn't have had nothin' to do with ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne

... after two years of immunity, the Southwest had become a main theater of the war. There was plenty of warning of what was coming, for the British squadron intended for the attack began assembling in the West Indies before the close of summer. No one knew, however, where or when the blow would fall. To Jackson the first necessity seemed to be to make sure of the defenses of Mobile. For a time, at all events, he believed that the attack would ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... a few days we met with a severe gale of wind, in which we sprung our main-mast, and received considerable other damage. We were then obliged to bear away for the West Indies, and on our passage fell in with and took a brig from Norwich, ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... culture, that they seem to be exempted from the first general curse, that "man should eat his bread in the sweat of his brow." They have also the Chinese paper mulberry, morus papyrifera, which they call Aouto; a tree resembling the wild fig-tree of the West Indies; another species of fig, which they call Matte; the cordia sebestina orientalis, which they call Etou; a kind of Cyprus grass, which they call Moo; a species of tournefortia, which they call Taheinoo; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... country speaks volumes of the services rendered by that society. The Royal Agricultural Society of England and the Royal Agricultural Society of Ireland followed in its wake, and with similarly beneficial results. I myself was instrumental in establishing an agricultural society in the West Indies, which has already done much to revive the spirits of the planters; and I shall be very much disappointed, indeed, if that society does not prove the means, before many years are past, of establishing the truth so important to humanity, that, even in tropical countries, ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... proclaim that the sole way to avert the ruin now menacing the world is to guarantee to all nations freedom to develop, "unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid." So, forsooth, are we to end war. Nature laughs at such dreams. The life of one is the death of another. Where are the teeming populations of the West Indies, where the civilisations of Mexico or of Peru, where are the blackfellows of Australia? Since means of subsistence are limited, the fancy that one group can increase or develop save at the expense of another is an illusion, instantly dissipated by ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... distinction, his reputation having preceded him. The latter part of the year found him again at Stockton, publishing a work on contagious and endemic fevers, 'more especially the contagious fever of ships, jails, and hospitals, vulgarly called the yellow-fever of the West Indies;' together with 'an explanation of military discipline and economy, with a scheme for the medical arrangements of armies.' He undertook, about this time, by desire of Count Woronzow, the Russian ambassador, the medical charge of seventeen ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various

... and cold as his uncle walked to the door and called Jem; and as he waited he looked at the map of an estate in the West Indies, all fly-specked and yellow, then at the portraits of three merchant vessels in full sail, all as yellow and fly-specked as the map, and showing the peculiarity emphasised by the ingenious artist, of their sails blown out one way and ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn

... convert her back into a schooner yacht, as otherwise there will be a difficulty about papers whenever she enters a port. There is one more thing I wish to ask you. You see, she might not turn into the Mediterranean. She might, for example, make for the West Indies, in which case she would be almost certain to ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty

... sits a man of strong and sturdy frame, whose face has been roughened by northern tempests, and blackened by the burning sun of the West Indies. He wears an immense periwig, flowing down over his shoulders. His coat has a wide embroidery of golden foliage; and his waistcoat, likewise, is all flowered over and bedizened with gold. His red, rough hands, which have done many ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... geography. In one of his letters he talks of Guadaloupe as being in another hemisphere. Speaking of that island, his very words are these: "Whether you return hither or stay in another hemisphere."' Guadaloupe, being in the West Indies, is in ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... and the vessel sailed. The ensuing morning she was clear of the sands, and a pilot-vessel off Holyhead having received the pilot, she steered down the Irish Channel to join a convoy for the West Indies, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... from English conservatories or from abroad. Crowds of strange and spotted orchids stood together in the drawing-room, staring upon the hurly-burly of furniture and ornaments. In the corners of the room were immense red flowers, such as hang among the crawling green jungles of the West Indies. They gleamed, like flames, amid a shower of cunningly arranged green leaves, and palms sheltered them from the electric rays of the ceiling. The tentroom was a maze of tulips, in vases, in pots, in china bowls that ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... century Mauritius was used by the French as a basis from which to operate against England's Indian merchantmen; so England captured the island and also the neighbor, Bourbon, to stop that annoyance. England gave Bourbon back; the government in London did not want any more possessions in the West Indies. If the government had had a better quality of geography in stock it would not have wasted Bourbon in that foolish way. A big war will temporarily shut up the Suez Canal some day and the English ships will have to go to India around ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... square miles, or about the size of the State of New Hampshire. With the several islands, the entire area of Denmark is fourteen thousand five hundred square miles. Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and several small islands in the West Indies, belong to her. The population is nearly one million eight hundred thousand—about equal to that of ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic



Words linked to "West Indies" :   Tobago, the Indies, Commonwealth of the Bahamas, West Indian, Bahamas, British West Indies, archipelago, Trinidad, obeah, Atlantic, Atlantic Ocean, Bahama Islands, Cayman Islands, Caribbean, obi, French West Indies, Virgin Islands, Antilles, Anguillan, Montserrat, Anguilla



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