Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




West Indian   /wɛst ˈɪndiən/   Listen
West Indian

noun
1.
A native or inhabitant of the West Indies.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"West Indian" Quotes from Famous Books



... or fruit of a tree growing in great abundance in Jamaica, particularly on the northern side of that island, on hilly spots, near the coast; it is also a native of both Indies. The Pimento Tree is a West Indian species of Myrtle; it grows to the height of twenty or thirty feet; the leaves are all of a deep, shining green, and the blossom consists of numerous branches of small, white, aromatic flowers, which ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... Spain struggled vainly with the West Indian problem. Four large islands and forty small ones, peopled by barbarians, were beyond the range of Spanish experience in the art of government. Grants of land were made, with the condition that the holder should exercise a paternal rule over the thriftless inhabitants. It was thought to pay ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... banished now that her mamma was to have an establishment; for on the point of birth Gwendolen was quite easy. She had no notion how her maternal grandfather got the fortune inherited by his two daughters; but he had been a West Indian—which seemed to exclude further question; and she knew that her father's family was so high as to take no notice of her mamma, who nevertheless preserved with much pride the miniature of a Lady Molly in that connection. She would probably have known much more ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... is not neglected. Excellent coffee is grown; and arrow-root, equal to the best West Indian, is prepared, at 18s. 6d. per bottle of twenty-four ounces, about a fourth of the price of that article ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... war had saddled Great Britain with a national debt of eight hundred million pounds. Of material gain there was little to show but the acquisition of Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch; of the former French colony of Mauritius, and of a few West Indian islands. The continued possession of the Rock of Gibraltar, and of Malta, the old stronghold of the Knights of Malta, together with the British protectorate over the Ionic Isles, assured to England her commanding position in the Mediterranean. At home the pressure of the heavy ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... estate, after paying the expense of cultivation, should gain both the rent of the landlord and the profit of the farmer. He is apt to denominate, however, his whole gain, profit, and thus confounds rent with profit, at least in common language. The greater part of our North American and West Indian planters are in this situation. They farm, the greater part of them, their own estates: and accordingly we seldom hear of the rent of a plantation, but frequently of ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... eclipsed all others. Upon his arrival Gottschalk played privately at a small party. He was a foreign-looking youth, with a peculiarly dull eye, and taciturn, but he was familiar with every kind of music. When he was asked he played Chopin, and with great skill. But his chief successes were his West Indian melodies, which were full of picturesque suggestion. His execution was rapid, brilliant, and forcible, but a great deal of his playing was too evidently tours de force. It was always interesting to watch his audience, ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis

... escorted by Ted. "My!" she exclaimed, shaking the raindrops from her clothes as she stood on the porch, "but this is going to be a night! Father says the papers have warnings that we should probably get the tail-end of a West Indian hurricane that was headed this way, and I guess it has come! It's getting worse every minute. Have you seen how the tide is rising? Get on your things and come down to the beach. Ted brought me, because I could hardly stand up against the wind. He's going back presently. ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman

... and unexpected success; and having realized a few pounds from its profits, Burns set out for Greenock, where he was to take ship for his new West Indian home. But his poems had attracted so much attention, and had been the cause of such commendation, that he was finally encouraged to stay and enjoy some of the fruits of his genius, which the world was now ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... widespread Tupi-Guaranay race extended—from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata and the boundless plains of the Pampas, north to the northernmost islands of the West Indian Archipelago—the early explorers found the natives piously attributing their knowledge of the arts of life to a venerable and benevolent old man whom they called "Our Ancestor," Tamu, or ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... masses to the right, but it was obvious that the thunderings above them were only commencing their deep and terrible pealings. In a short time they increased in violence and fury, and resembled, in fact, a West Indian hurricane more than those storms which are peculiar to our milder climates. The tempest-voice of the wind was now in dreadful accordance! with its power. Poor Kennedy, who fortunately knew every step of the rugged road along which he struggled and staggered, was frequently obliged to crouch himself ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... the Cunard Company was followed up in 1840 and 1841 with contracts for steam mail-carriage to the West Indies and South American ports.[AD] The first (1840) went to the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, for the West Indian service, the mail subsidy fixed at two hundred and forty thousand pounds a year;[AE] the second (1841), to the Pacific Steam Navigation Company. The latter enterprise was promoted by an American,[AF] ...
— Manual of Ship Subsidies • Edwin M. Bacon

... transfer our Lord's great parable from moral to intellectual matters) to Life; to the living and permanent knowledge of living things and of the laws of their existence. Humbling, truly, to one who looks back to the summer of 1754, when good Mr. Ellis, the wise and benevolent West Indian merchant, read before the Royal Society his paper proving the animal nature of corals, and followed it up the year after by that "Essay toward a Natural History of the Corallines, and other like Marine Productions ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... Liberte, Barbu. Oui. Comment? C'est ca. Liberte pour tou'l'monde. Quand? Apres la soupe. Oui. Liberte pour tou'l'monde apres la soupe!"—to which jest astonishingly reacted a certain old man known as the West Indian Negro (a stocky credulous creature with whom Jean would have nothing to do, and whose tales of Brooklyn were indeed outclassed by Jean's histoires d'amour) who leaped rheumatically from his paillasse at ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... to the award of the V.C. to Indians, many writers sent letters to the Press claiming that it was unprecedented for coloured warriors to wear the V.C. Whitaker and similar publications might have told them that a Native African sergeant of the West Indian Regiment wears the V.C. won on the Gambia River as long ago ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... the sixteenth and the commencement of the seventeenth centuries the West Indian archipelago became the theater of French and English maritime enterprise. The Carib strongholds were occupied, and by degrees their fierce spirit was subdued, their war dances relinquished, their war canoes destroyed, their ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk

... very bottom of the whole thing, perhaps, were the West Indian slaves—"John Indias" and his wife Tituba, whom Master Parris had brought with him from Barbados. There were two children in the house, a little daughter of nine, named Elizabeth; and Abigail Williams, ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson

... with American policy in the West Indian waters was the purchase in 1917 of the Danish Islands just off the coast of Porto Rico. The strategic position of the islands, especially in relation to Haiti and Porto Rico, made them an object of American concern as early as 1867, when a treaty of purchase was negotiated only ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... Nevertheless in 1833 the noble lord the Secretary for the Colonies brought in a bill to abolish slavery. Suppose that when he resumed his seat, after making that most eloquent speech in which he explained his plan to us, some West Indian planter had risen, and had said that in 1792, in 1796, in 1807, all the leading philanthropists had solemnly declared that they had no intention of emancipating the negroes; would not the noble lord have answered that nothing that had been said by anybody ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... salary as Privy Seal, which is no great sacrifice, considering how long he is likely to enjoy it, and everybody gives him credit for having suggested the relief to coals for his own interest. Lady Holland, who has got a West Indian estate, attacked him about the sugar duties, and asked him if they would not reduce them. He said 'No.' She retorted, 'That is because you have no West Indian estate; you have got your own job about coals done, and you ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... below, could be endangered by a single careless word, or act. The whole affair seemed more a nightmare than a reality. I was actually serving as first officer on a pirate ship in search of vessels to rob on the high seas, commanding a crew of West Indian cut-throats—the very scum of hell, and under the order of a Portuguese devil, whose ambition coolly plotted murder. I was sailing under the black flag, to be hung if captured, compelled to act out the masquerade, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... to a codicil to Lewis' will, which he drew at this time and dated at Maison Diodati, Geneva; a somewhat rhetorical document in which he provided for the protection of the slaves on his Jamaica plantations. It was two years after this, and on his return voyage from a visit to these West Indian estates, that Lewis died of yellow fever and was buried at sea. Byron made this note of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... head of each regiment in turn, and occasionally one was shot. A frequent employment was the cutting of spruce tops to make spruce beer. This innocent beverage was reputed sovereign against scurvy; and such was the fame of its virtues that a copious supply of the West Indian molasses used in concocting it was thought indispensable to every army or garrison in the wilderness. Throughout this campaign it is repeatedly mentioned in general orders, and the soldiers are promised that ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... the Antilles, steps were taken to attain those ends by a treaty of commerce. A similar treaty was afterwards signed by the Dominican Republic. Subsequently overtures were made by Her Britannic Majesty's Government for a like mutual extension of commercial intercourse with the British West Indian and South American ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... feel even in this hour of their triumph that the end at which they aimed had been fully reached. In half their great effort against the world-power of Britain they had utterly failed. She had even won ground in India. In America itself she still retained the northern dominion of Canada. Her West Indian islands remained intact. Above all, she had asserted more nobly than ever her command of the sea, and with it the possibility of building up a fresh power in such lands as Cook had called her to. But at the close of the war there was less thought ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green

... emergency heliocopter batteries—glided down to the calm surface. For a moment we lay there, rocking—a dark blob on the water. I heard a sudden sharp swish. An under-surface freight vessel, plowing from Venezuelan ports to the West Indian Islands, came suddenly to the surface. Its headlight flashed on, but missed us. It sped past. I could see the sleek black outline of its wet back, and the lines of foam as it sheered the water. We lay rocking in its ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... heir of the king of Angola, and general of the forces. He was decoyed by Captain Driver aboard his ship; his suite of twenty men were made drunk with rum; the ship weighed anchor; and the prince, with all his men, were sold as slaves in one of the West Indian Islands. Here Oroonoko met Imoin'da (3 syl.), his wife, from whom he had been separated, and whom he thought was dead. He headed a rising of the slaves, and the lieutenant-governor tried to seduce Imoinda. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... and shades in my character were intended. I was pretty confident my poems would meet with some applause; but at the worst, the roar of the Atlantic would deafen the voice of censure, and the novelty of West Indian scenes make me forget neglect. I threw off six hundred copies, of which I had got subscriptions for about three hundred and fifty. My vanity was highly gratified by the reception I met with from the public; and besides I pocketed, all ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various

... races occupying the other portions of South America; and there is a strong probability that they are of a different origin from the races occupying Chili, Patagonia, Brazil, and the great district washed by the waters of the West Indian Sea. Science as yet cannot give anything like an accurate idea of the time man has existed in these widely-diversified countries, but we cannot go wrong in accepting the statement of Darwin, who observes that "we must admit that man has inhabited South America for an ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... wishing-cap of Fortunatus, which is a Celtic legend; in the cornucopia of the Romans; in the goat Amalthea among the Greeks; in the wishing-cow and wishing-tree of the Hindoos; in the pumpkin-tree of the West Indian Ananzi stories; in the cow of the Servian legends, who spins yarn out of her ear; in the Sampo of the Finns; and in all those stories of cups, and glasses, and horns, and rings, and swords, seized by some bold spirit ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... or conceal their origin, or to refuse their sympathy to those who need it so much. Pushkin, the Russian Shakspeare, had a black ancestor. One of the chief editors of the London Times, who died a few years ago, was a West Indian colored man, who had no interest in concealing the fact. One of the generals of the British army is similarly favored, although the fact is not often referred to. General Alfred Dodds, the ranking general of the French army, now in command in China, is a quadroon. ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... battle-ships under Admiral Sampson was made to steam hither and yon in the Caribbean Sea looking for an enemy's fleet which much of the time lay snugly on the other side of the Atlantic. Accordingly, up to June 15, the results of naval operations in West Indian waters were almost nil. Powder had been burned indeed as when, on April 27, the Spanish works at Matanzas were bombarded and silenced by the "New York," "Puritan," and "Cincinnati," of Admiral Sampson's squadron, and on ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... that far-off day of my romance, when from between the blue and white bales in Don Ramon's darkened storeroom, at Kingston, I saw the door open before the figure of an old man with the tired, long, white face, that day I am not likely to forget. I remember the chilly smell of the typical West Indian store, the indescribable smell of damp gloom, of locos, of pimento, of olive oil, of new sugar, of new rum; the glassy double sheen of Ramon's great spectacles, the piercing eyes in the mahogany face, while the tap, tap, tap of a cane on the flags went on behind the inner door; ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... appears to be very abundant, as rich dresses of it are worn even by the common soldiers on festive days; and it may be seen on people of all ranks even in poor towns. The fabrics are at least equal to those of China. The cotton of Japan seems to be of the same kind as that of our West Indian colonies. It furnishes the ordinary dress of the great mass of the people, and also serves all the other purposes for which we employ wool, flax, furs, and feathers. The culture of it is, of course, very extensive; but the fabrics are all coarse: Golownin ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various

... future events; but within that circle a thousand various chances and circumstances may direct it in as many different ways; and in every picture of the future there is a dim spot, which the eye of the understanding cannot penetrate. It appears, however, to be extremely probable that in the West Indian Islands the white race is destined to be subdued, and the black population to share the same fate upon ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... England. But all these Puritan communities in the north were different in character from Virginia in the south; they consisted of democratic townships, Virginia of plantations worked by slaves. Slave labour was also the economic basis of the colonies established on various West Indian islands during the first half of the seventeenth century; and this distinction between colonies used for exploitation and colonies used for settlement has led to important constitutional variations in the empire. Only those colonies in which large white communities are settled have ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... of the brig Enterprise, the last of whom, I may tell you, was the officer my father had described to Gordon as knowing so little of navigation that he had, after cruising out of sight of land for some months, mistaken the Mainland of Orkney for one of the West Indian Islands. ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton

... misrule in Cuba has been fifty times worse than the worst Anglo-Saxon misrule ever known. The island has been used by Spain simply as a gold-mine.[J] So far as those toiling in it are concerned, she has displayed an indifference similar to that which resulted in the destruction of her West Indian population three centuries ago. The Cubans have been taxed without representation, shot down if they remonstrated, and mocked by acts of the Cortes, granting relief which it was never intended to afford to them, but which for a time served in some degree to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... and Juliet, the Clandestine Marriage, the West Indian, the Gamester, Every one has his fault, and other dramatic works of this order, fail to afford attractions equal to Mother Goose, Cinderilla, the Forty thieves, an elephant, or a band of Indians, can it be ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various

... "adventurers" contributing to the expenses of the war, and all soldiers serving in it, grants of land in proportion to their service and contribution. This act, and a letter from Lord Essex, the Parliamentarian Commander-in-Chief, recommending the transportation of captured recusants to the West Indian Colonies, effectually put a stop to these negotiations. In Ulster, by the end of April, there were 19,000 troops, regulars and volunteers, in the garrison or in the field. Newry was taken by Monroe and Chichester, where 80 men and women and 2 priests were put to death. Magennis was obliged ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... West Indian islands of volcanic origin; and three of them—St. Vincent, Martinique, and Guadaloupe—contain active volcanoes. The most remarkable is the volcano of Morne- Garou, in St. Vincent, the eruptions from which have been particularly violent. In 1812 the ashes which it ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous

... title of the "West Indian Company." It was to have the sovereignty of all Louisiana on the condition only of liege homage to the King of France, and of a crown of gold of thirty marks at the commencement of every new reign. It was to exercise all the rights of sovereignty, such as levying troops, equipping vessels-of-war, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... Oct. 6.-Prospect of an East and West Indian war. French encroachments. Re-establishment of the Inquisition at Florence. The Boccaneri. Major ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... some valuable aid from my uncle, Sir Alexander Cochrane, who was then in command of the West Indian station, and things looked much brighter for the cause of independence. But unfortunately a few months later Pitt died, the Whigs came into power, and as usual a feeble policy succeeded a strong one, and all aid was withdrawn from Miranda. ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty

... board before you exhibits the disposition of the British West Indian squadron under Rodney, when, early on the morning of the 9th of April, in the year of our blessed Lord 1782, he discovered part of the French fleet, commanded by the Count de Grasse, lying under the north end of the Island of Dominica. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... heart. Poor little girl! she was greatly discomfited at the vanishing of her noble vision of the heroic self-devoted father, and ready on the other hand to believe him a villain, like Bertram Risingham, or 'the Pirate,' being possessed by this idea on account of his West Indian voyages. At any rate, she was determined not to be accepted or acknowledged without her mother, and was already rehearsing magnanimous letters ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... laCosa's sea chart, 1500, Cuba is fairly drawn, with the sea to the south dotted with islands without names. In a few years the mist surrounding [27]the new world had so far been dispelled as to disclose a quite accurate detail of the larger West Indian islands{1} and to offer a continent to the west, one that placed Cipangu still far too much to the east of the coast of Asia.{2} An island of some size off the southwest of Cuba seems to have been intended at first for Jamaica, but ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville

... 300 species, mostly Mexican, with a few Brazilian and West Indian, is called nipple cactus, and consists of globular or cylindrical succulent plants, whose surface instead of being cut up into ridges with alternate furrows, as in Melocactus, is broken up into teat-like cylindrical or angular tubercles, spirally arranged, and terminating in a radiating ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... there is less of immorality than in those of his contemporaries. The West Indian, which was first put upon the stage in 1771, and which is still occasionally presented, is chiefly noticeable in that an Irishman and a West Indian are the principal characters, and that he has not brought them into ridicule, as was common at the time, but has exalted them by their merits. The best of his other plays are The Jew, The Wheel of Fortune, and The Fashionable Lover. Goldsmith, in his poem Retaliation, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... he proposed calling for some punch, which was readily agreed to; he seemed at first inclined to make it himself, but afterwards changed his mind, and left that province to the waiter, telling him to have it pure West Indian, or he could not ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... West Indian merchant he ought to know," murmured Sidney Graham to his charming cousin, Adelaide Leon. The girl's soft eyes twinkled, as she surveyed the serious little city magnate with his placid spouse. Montagu Samuels was narrow-minded and narrow-chested, and managed to be pompous on a meagre allowance ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... some difference of eyes, complexion, and so forth—be pleased to step forward, sir."—A young seafaring man came forward.—"Here," proceeded the counsellor, "is the real Simon Pure—here's Godfrey Bertram Hewit, arrived last night from Antigua via Liverpool, mate of a West Indian, and in a fair way of doing well in the world, although he came somewhat irregularly ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... State have imported as labourers both West Indian negroes—principally Barbadians—and Chinamen. In both cases the mortality has been terrible—more than the white mortality, which competent authorities put down for the Congo at 77 per cent., and the experiment has therefore failed. It may be said that much of ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... its introduction is asserted to have been due to the tenacity of purpose of a Dr. Gibbon, whose wife wanted a candle box, an article of common domestic use of the time. The Doctor, who had laid by in the garden of his house in King Street, Covent Garden, some planks sent to him by his brother, a West Indian captain, asked the joiner to use a part of the wood for this purpose; it was found too tough and hard for the tools of the period, but the Doctor was not to be thwarted, and insisted on harder-tempered tools being found, and the task completed; the result was the production ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield

... discreet light, it was no courtier's flattery to say that she might very well have passed for thirty. Her tall, elegant figure was girlish in its supple slimness, and she had an easy and natural grace in every movement, which she inherited with her tropical West Indian blood. Her features were delicate, and I have heard that in her youth she was strikingly beautiful; but, like most Creole women, she had become passee in early middle age. She had made a brave fight, however—with ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle

... of these craft varied considerably. For over three years they maintained a constant patrol in the North Sea, Atlantic, English Channel, Irish Sea, Mediterranean, Adriatic, Suez Canal, Straits of Gibraltar, and in West Indian waters. Only one who knows by experience can fully appreciate what work in these northern seas, with their winter snows and Arctic winds, and their chilly summer fogs, really means to a mere thirty tons of nautical humanity in as many square leagues of storm-swept sea infested ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife

... finely variegated tints were admired, but in that age the dream of El Dorado caused matters of more value to be neglected. The first that was brought to England was about 1724, a few planks having been sent to Dr. Gibbons, of London, by a brother who was a West Indian captain. The doctor was erecting a house, and gave the planks to the workmen, who rejected them as being too hard. The doctor then had a candle-box made of the wood, his cabinet-maker also complaining of the hardness of the timber. But, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various

... The West Indian Islands had an especial fascination for Froude on account of the great naval exploits of Rodney, Hood, and other British sailors. 'Kingsley's At Last had revived his interest in them; and though Kingsley had long been dead, his memory ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... protection in corn may be said to have practically fallen the principle of protection in that country altogether. That principle was a little complicated in regard to the sugar duties and to the navigation laws. The sugar produced in the West Indian colonies was allowed to enter that country at rates of duty much lower than those imposed upon the sugar grown in foreign lands. The abolition of slavery in the colonies had made labor there somewhat costly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... were already an independent state. These reports were accepted by the English authorities as correct statements of fact, for they seemed to be confirmed by the evidence of London merchants and by at least one West Indian governor, who knew the colony and had no ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews

... extended even to the most indifferent objects. It may be admitted that the cruel persecution of the Quakers, and the grotesque horrors of witch-finding in New Salem, gave Raynal at least as good a text against Protestantism as he had found against Catholicism in the infernal doings in the West Indian Islands or in Peru. Even after this bloody fever had abated, says Raynal, the inhabitants still preserved a kind of rigorism that savours of the sombre days in which the Puritan colonies had their rise. He illustrates this by the case of a young woman who was ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... one other subject—very important as a part of this general outlook and forecast of American policy looking towards the south. That is our special relation towards the countries, the smaller countries about the Caribbean, and particularly the West Indian countries, the islands that lie directly on the route between our ports and the Panama Canal. Some of them have had a pretty hard time. The conditions of their lives have been such that it has been difficult for them to maintain stable and orderly governments. They have been cursed, some of them, ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... conclusive evidence that the Southern gentleman did, and does sing such love ditties, and talk sweet nothings to the Southern black woman, and the woman of mixed blood, but unlike Solomon, he is too much of a coward to publicly extol her. During the slave period in the West Indian Islands a child born to a slave woman shared the fortunes of its father; and if the father was free, so was the child. But the American slave holder reversed that law so that he could humble the bond-woman and damn ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... justified in making slaves of their captives. The human mind can not withhold its assent from the justice of the verdict, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." The English made all their captives slaves, and women and children were sold to all the horrors of West Indian plantation bondage. The Narraganset Indian who owned Mrs. Rowlandson soon sold her to a celebrated chieftain named Quinnapin, a Narraganset sachem, who had married, for one of his three wives, Wetamoo, of whom we have heretofore spoken. Quinnapin ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... that line is drawn between rich and poor? England knows no line of demarcation, save the shore of the great sea; and even that her generosity is overleaping at this moment at the call of mere humanity, in bounty to sufferers by the West Indian hurricane, and by the Chicago fire. Will you send your help across the Atlantic; and deny it to the sufferers at your own doors? At least, if the rich be confined by an imaginary line across, the poor on the other side will not—they will ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... since. But at our own doors, from "Plymouth to Peterhead," stretches this waste Continent of humanity—three million human beings who are enslaved—some of them to taskmasters as merciless as any West Indian overseer, all of them ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... the world traces of an indigenous dog family are found, the only exceptions being the West Indian Islands, Madagascar, the eastern islands of the Malayan Archipelago, New Zealand, and the Polynesian Islands, where there is no sign that any dog, wolf, or fox has existed as a true aboriginal animal. In the ancient Oriental lands, and generally among the early Mongolians, ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... That act of the British Parliament, and he might add in this case with peculiar emphasis, of the British nation, passed on the 12th day of August, 1833, to take effect on the first day of August, 1834, and which enfranchised 800,000 West Indian slaves, was an event sublime in its nature, comprehensive and mighty in its immediate influences and remote consequences, precious beyond expression to the cause of freedom, and encouraging beyond the measure of any government on earth to the ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown

... thunders its annual joyous return. They must renew the slave trade, with all its train of atrocities. They must suppress the workings of British philanthropy, seeking to meliorate the condition of the unfortunate West Indian slave. They must arrest the career of South American deliverance from thraldom. They must blow out the moral lights around us and extinguish that greatest torch of all which America presents to a benighted world—pointing the way to their rights, their liberties, and ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... an hour's leave, visited once more his friends of the Invincibles. He had begged a package of fine West Indian cigarettes from Sherburne, and he literally laid them at the feet of the two colonels—he found them sitting together on the grass, lean gray men who seemed to be wholly ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler

... eighteenth century piracy was on the wane, and practically had died out by the beginning of the nineteenth, the final thrust that destroyed it being given by the American and English Navies in the North Atlantic and West Indian Seas. But by this time piracy had degenerated to mere sea-robbing, the days of gallant and ruthless sea-battles had passed, and the pirate of those decadent days was generally a Spanish-American half-breed, with no courage, ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse

... canikin, several sticks of tobacco, two brace of very handsome pistols, a piece of bar silver, an old Spanish watch and some other trinkets of little value and mostly of foreign make, a pair of compasses mounted with brass, and five or six curious West Indian shells. I have often wondered since why he should have carried about these shells with him in his wandering, guilty, and ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... or biscuit which was stowed in bags in the bread-room in the hold, soon lost its hardness at sea, becoming soft and wormy, so that the sailors had to eat it in the dark. The biscuits, or cakes of bread, seem to have been current coin with many of the West Indian natives. In those ships where flour was carried, in lieu of biscuit, as sometimes happened in cases of emergency, the men received a ration of doughboy, a sort of dumpling of wetted flour boiled with pork ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... former colonial power, would use the Mississippi Valley as a means of provisioning her West Indian islands; of dominating Spanish America, and of subordinating to her purposes the feeble United States, which her policy assigned to the lands between the Atlantic and the Alleghanies. The ancient Bourbon monarchy, the revolutionary republic, and the Napoleonic ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... center in the Atlantic, this earthquake spread one enormous convulsion over an area of 700,000 square miles, agitating, by a single impulse, the lakes of Scotland and Sweden, and the islands of the West Indian Sea. Not, however, by a simultaneous shock, for the element of time comes in with the distance of undulation; and, together with this, another complexity of action in the transmission of earthquake movements through the sea, arising ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... trimming round the bottom; coloured stockings; a bodice laced with silver, and covered with silver brooches and other ornaments; a waistbelt, which is sometimes entirely of metal; a kerchief tied over the head, after the fashion of the bandana of West Indian negresses; and on occasions a shawl ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman

... strangers,—and all this as near to the whole Southern coast as Boston and New York are, all this within three or four days' sail of any one of the Atlantic ports North or South. England keeps this, no doubt, as a sort of halfway house on the road to her West Indian possessions; but should we go to war with her, she would use it none the less as a base of offensive operations, where she might gather and hurl upon any unprotected port all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... curtain of the large bow-window, so common in the West Indian houses, and the rich moonlight, now unvexed by the dull glare of the taper, flowed into the apartment, bathing every object it touched with silvery radiance. Clara sat in the window, in the full ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... would afford much detail, but want of space has prevented me from mentioning the Rev. George Leacock, the West Indian clergyman, who gave up everything when already an old man to pave the way of the Gospel in the Pongas. And the Cape still retains its first Bishop, so that it is only on the side of Natal and Zululand, where the workers have passed away, that the narrative ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... THE FISHERIES.—The treaty of 1814 did not end our troubles with Great Britain. Our ships were still shut out of her West Indian ports. The fort at Astoria, near the mouth of the Columbia River, had been seized during the war and for a time was not returned as the treaty required. The authorities in Nova Scotia claimed that we no longer had a right to fish in British waters, and seized our fishing vessels ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... scampered about over the sand or through the undergrowth, busy about goodness knows what. The beautiful cocoa-nut palm was plentiful, so much so that I wondered why there were no settlers to collect "copra," or dried cocoa-nut, for oil. My West Indian experience came in handy now, for I was able to climb a lofty tree in native fashion, and cut down a grand bunch of green nuts, which form one of the most refreshing and nutritious of foods, as well as a cool and delicious drink. We had no line with us, so we took off our belts, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... remain secret. Before a single soldier had set foot on the transport ships which had been lying for weeks in the harbors of Havana and Tampa, the Japanese news bureaus in Kingston (Jamaica) and Havana had been fully informed as to where the blow was to fall, partly by West Indian half-breed spies and partly by the obliging American press. One regiment of cavalry had already arrived at Corpus Christi from Tampa on July 30th, and the Cuban troops were expected on ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff

... have made the slightest difference, as I should have come whether you liked it or not. And now come out—do; the sun is shining, and will melt away this severe attack of the blues. Let us go into the Park and watch for our future prey,—you for your palsied millionaire, I for my swarthy West Indian." ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... our Colonial Post Offices generally were managed from home, and were subject to the British Postmaster-General. Gentlemen were sent out from England to be postmasters, surveyors, and what not; and as our West Indian islands have never been regarded as being of themselves happily situated for residence, the gentlemen so sent were sometimes more conspicuous for want of income than for official zeal and ability. Hence the stables had become Augean. I was ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope

... at his orchids and at the red West Indian flowers, and he thought of those crawling green jungles from which they should have come, and ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... on the west of Shark's Bay abound in a concretional calcareous rock of very recent formation, similar to what is found on the shore in several other parts of New Holland, especially in the neighbourhood of King George's Sound; and which is abundant also on the coast of the West Indian Islands, and of the Mediterranean. Captain King's specimens of this production are from Dirk Hartog's and Rottnest Islands; and M. Peron states that the upper parts of Bernier and Dorre Islands are composed of a rock of the same nature. This part of the coast is covered in various places ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... Babeque, which he trusted might prove some rich and civilized island on the coast of Asia." And so he sailed away for Hispaniola (Santo Domingo) which appears to have become, a little later, his favorite West Indian resort. ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson

... very similar habits, the Indian mongoose (Herpestus griseus or H. mungo), has been naturalized in Jamaica, whence it has been carried to other West Indian Islands, and in the Hawaiian group. It has also been tried, but unsuccessfully, in Australia. The first introduction into Jamaica took place in 1872, and ten years later the animal was credited with saving many thousands ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... "one of considerable social progress"; that "uninterrupted harmony" had "prevailed between the colonists and the local government"; that "the spirit of enterprise" which had proceeded from Jamaica for two years had "enabled the British West Indian colonies to endure with comparative fortitude, apprehensions and difficulties which otherwise might have depressed them ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot

... the two New Worlds, they leapt up when the great sun called them, in whirls and spouts of clear hot steam; and rushed of their own passion to the northward, while the whirling earth-ball whirled them east. So north- eastward they rushed aloft, across the gay West Indian isles, leaving below the glitter of the flying-fish, and the sidelong eyes of cruel sharks; above the cane-fields and the plaintain-gardens, and the cocoa- groves which fringe the shores; above the rocks which throbbed with earthquakes, and the ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... results of the war with America, that the calamities of the slave-trade should have been originally brought to the knowledge of the people. The loss of our colonies on the mainland, naturally directed public attention to the increased importance of the West Indian colonies. A large proportion of our supplies for the war had been drawn from those islands; they had become the station of powerful fleets during the latter portion of the war; large garrisons were placed in them; the intercourse became enlarged from a merely commercial ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... an amateur such as I am has certain advantages over sailboating. A motor-boatist—even the most reckless kind—knows enough to stay ashore when a West Indian hurricane is romping along the coast, playfully chasing its own tail like a young puppy; but that kind of a situation is just pie for your ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... merchant service, and was in command of a trading schooner at an early age. The American trading vessels of that period were supposed to be excluded by the navigation laws from commerce with the British West Indian Islands, though with the concealed or very slightly disguised assistance of the planters, they engaged in a good deal of contraband commerce. The war between France and Great Britain tended further to make the carrying trade of neutrals difficult. Bainbridge had therefore to expect, and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... would say if I were to marry a West Indian! He wouldn't say much to me, because we never speak, but he'd lead poor Greg a horrid life. He'd be sure to think she was a nigger, or at least a Creole. ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... dog, or a pig, and who was sometimes accompanied by a black man. Louder next related his experience of being changed to a horse and ridden to a witches' ball, and of seeing Rebecca Nurse ride through the air on a broomstick. The West Indian negro man John, the husband of Tituba and servant of Mr. Parris, was next put on the witness stand. The magistrate ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick

... for Weymouth, took strong exception to compulsory apprenticeship, as perpetuating the principle of slavery, however mitigated by the recognition of personal liberty and the suppression of corporal punishment. It was found expedient, however, in deference to a very strong remonstrance from West Indian proprietors, to convert the proposed loan of L15,000,000 into an absolute payment of L20,000,000, and this noble donation, for conscience' sake, was actually ratified by parliament and the country. The bill founded on the resolutions ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... Practice,"[77] relates that it was customary, in the older navy of the United States, to allow public women to come on board at some of the ports and to go down to the men between decks, the Department of the Navy being probably actuated by the same humane principle that used to induce some of the West Indian cannibals to lend their wives to their prisoners of war who were intended, in the shape of roast or fricandeau, to grace the festive board, as it was deemed inhuman by these philanthropists to deprive a man ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... "modsha," whence doubtless, the word "musa" is derived. It is generally believed that the plant came from India to Egypt in the seventh century; it still forms a most important article of commerce in the markets of Cairo and Alexandria. In the year 1516, the banana was brought to the West Indian Islands by a monk, since which time it has rapidly spread over the tropics of America, and is found to the twenty-fifth degree north and south of the equator. It is equally indispensable and is appreciated by the immigrant ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... form. His land improvements, however, turned out unremunerative. His Hilton property was heavily encumbered in consequence of the part taken by members of the family in the Risings of 1696, 1715, and 1745, and great losses having been incurred in connection with his West Indian estates, Alexander got into pecuniary difficulties, and all his possessions, at home and abroad, had to be sold either by himself or by his trustees to meet the demands of his creditors. He was a distinguished agriculturist for his time, and was ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... spirits, and some rich West Indian fabrics for ladies' dresses. A cask of spirits and a box of cigars have gone up to the castle. Old ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... portion of the world, has become adapted to special climates. Wheat imported from India and sown in good wheat soil in England produced the most meagre ears; while wheat taken from France to the West Indian Islands produced either wholly barren spikes or spikes furnished with two or three miserable seeds, while West Indian seed by its side yielded an enormous harvest. The orange was very tender when first introduced ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... years, the government of the United States has turned its attention to the capabilities of the Florida Reef, as an advanced naval station; a sort of Downs, or St. Helen's Roads, for the West Indian seas. As yet little has been done beyond making the preliminary surveys, but the day is not probably very distant when fleets will lie at anchor among the islets described in our earlier chapters, or garnish the fine waters of Key West. For a long time it was thought that even frigates ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... huge society of the present period, was limited in its proportions, and composed of elements more refined though far less various. It consisted mainly of the great landed aristocracy, who had quite absorbed the nabobs of India, and had nearly appropriated the huge West Indian fortunes. Occasionally, an eminent banker or merchant invested a large portion of his accumulations in land, and in the purchase of parliamentary influence, and was in time duly admitted into the sanctuary. But those vast and ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... pleasant hour can be spent on the deck of a splendid steamer, as it cleaves its way through a sapphire tropical sea, bound for some lovely West Indian islet; with a good cigar and the dearest companion in the world, watching the dolphins and the flying-fish, and mildly interesting one's self in one's fellow-passengers, the captain, the crew. And then, the hour spent and the cigar smoked out, it is well to shut one's ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... officer down to the last arrived machinist or time-keeper, the five thousand Americans at work on the Isthmus seemed to me an exceptionally able, energetic lot, some of them grumbling, of course, but on the whole a mighty good lot of men. The West Indian negroes offer a greater problem, but they are doing pretty well also. I was astonished at the progress made. We spent the three days in working from dawn until long after darkness—dear Dr. Rixey being, of course, my faithful companion. Mother would see all she liked and then would go off on ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt

... Mrs. Mayow, was the wife of a gentleman in a high position in one of our Government offices. She was a West Indian creole, and a singularly beautiful person. Her complexion was of the clear olive-brown of a perfectly Moorish skin, with the color of a damask rose in her cheeks, and lips as red as coral. Her features were classically symmetrical, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... homely Christian name. I was christened Allan, after the name of a wealthy cousin of my father's—the late Allan Armadale—who possessed estates in our neighborhood, the largest and most productive in the island, and who consented to be my godfather by proxy. Mr. Armadale had never seen his West Indian property. He lived in England; and, after sending me the customary godfather's present, he held no further communication with my parents for years afterward. I was just twenty-one before we heard again ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... and smoking it in layers of aromatic leaves, the delicious "jerked hog" of Buccaneer annals. They reared cattle and poultry, cultivated corn and yams, plantains and cocoas, guavas and papaws and mameys and avocados and all luxurious West Indian fruits; the very weeds of their orchards had tropical luxuriance in their fragrance and in their names; and from the doors of their little thatched huts they looked across these gardens of delight to the magnificent lowland forests, and over those again to the faint ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... fire and sword up to the very walls of the English fort at Cape Coast. Sometimes the English confined themselves to remonstrance, sometimes fought, not always successfully, as upon one occasion Sir Charles Macarthy, the governor, with a West Indian regiment was utterly defeated, the governor himself and all his white officers, ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty

... Fenton somewhere in the world, but his wife was quite indifferent to his existence. He might be in the West Indian plantations or the hulks for what she cared. She had always gone her own way and meant to do so to the end of ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... in the more humid districts, taking the place of the lemon, and one variety—the Tahiti—has proved itself to be a heavy and regular bearer. The West Indian lime, from which the lime juice of commerce is made, is very easily grown, particularly in the more tropical parts, where it is often met with growing in an entirely uncultivated condition, and bearing heavy crops of fruit. Kumquats are easily grown, and ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson

... Ushant on the 1st of June, 1794, the strength of France was still formidable; and the losses which she inflicted on the commercial marine of her enemies exceeded those which she herself sustained. England, which had captured most of the French West Indian Islands, was the only Power that had wrested anything from the Republic. The dream of suppressing the Revolution by force of arms had vanished away; and the States which had entered upon the contest in levity, in fanaticism, or at the bidding ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... that was of most public interest in the thirty years of my father's life after his return from Greece. Except during a brief period of active service in his profession, when he had command of the British squadron in North American and West Indian waters, those thirty years were chiefly spent in efforts—by scientific research, by mechanical experiment, and by persevering argument—to increase the naval power of his country, and in efforts no less zealous to secure for himself that ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... panegyric upon the eloquent and statesmanlike speech of the gallant colonel—myself; then I thought I was making arrangements for setting out for my new appointment, and Sancho Panza never coveted the government of an island more than I did, though only a West Indian one; and, lastly, I saw myself the chosen diplomate on a difficult mission, and was actually engaged in the easy and agreeable occupation of outmaneuvering Talleyrand and Pozzo di Borgo, when Peter suddenly drew up at the door of a small cabin, and convinced me that I was still a mortal ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever

... cannikin, several sticks of tobacco, two brace of very handsome pistols, a piece of bar silver, an old Spanish watch and some other trinkets of little value and mostly of foreign make, a pair of compasses mounted with brass, and five or six curious West Indian shells. It has often set me thinking since that he should have carried about these shells with him in his wandering, guilty, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... probability "choked off" a good proportion of the commonplace readers who might have been well content to have put up with the humanitarian rhetoric of No. IV., if only for its connection with so unquestionable an actuality as West Indian sugar. It was, anyhow, owing to successive alienations of this kind that on 13th May 1796 the editor of the Watchman was compelled to bid farewell to his few remaining readers in the tenth number of his periodical, ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... in every one's eyes save his father's, his own sister, and lamely concluded "to take a draught of water," blushing under his brown skin as he spoke. Poor fellow! the Queen, even while she wished him in the farthest West Indian isle, could not help understanding that strange doubt and dread that come over the mind at the last moment before a longed-for meeting, and which had made even the bold young sailor glad to rally his hopes by this divination. Fortunately she thought only ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... contest between the parties of the administration and of the opposition. When in 1829 Mr. McLane had received his instructions as Minister to England, he had been directed by Mr. Van Buren to reopen negotiations on the subject of the West Indian trade, and in so doing the Secretary of State had reflected on the previous administration, and had said that the party in power would not support the pretensions of its predecessors. Such language was, of course, at variance with all ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge

... others," Dobbin continued, "as true and as kind-hearted as yourself. I'm not speaking about the West Indian heiress, Miss Osborne, but about a poor girl whom George once loved, and who was bred from her childhood to think of nobody but him. I've seen her in her poverty uncomplaining, broken-hearted, without ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of the troops at Plymouth was pitiable. No money was forthcoming for wages, and the soldiers were forced to forage for themselves in the neighbouring country. At last the fleet set sail (8 Oct., 1625). Its destination proved to be Cadiz, whither it was despatched in the hope of securing West Indian treasure on its way home. The expedition, however, turned out to be as complete a failure as that under ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe

... he had taken and destroyed forty more vessels and a hundred small craft. On May 22d he put to sea, and, as the news spread, a panic seized every commercial centre in the Spanish dominions. Half the merchants in Philip's empire saw ruin before them: the whole year's produce both of the East and West Indian trade was at Drake's mercy; and no one knew how Spain, with its resources already strained to the utmost, would survive ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... a name applied to the Garfish (q.v.) by Sydney fishermen. The word is West Indian, and is applied there to a fast-sailing schooner; also spelled ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... account for the ulceration alluded to. But still more curious was the fact of a lance-head of stone being found in him, not far from the buried iron, the flesh perfectly firm about it. Who had darted that stone lance? And when? It might have been darted by some Nor' West Indian long ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... Madagascar is the home of very singular and special insectivorous beasts of the genera Centetes, Ericulus, and Echinops; while the only other member of the group to which they belong is Solenodon, which is a resident in the West Indian Islands, Cuba and Hayti. The connexion, however, between the West Indies and Madagascar must surely have been at a time when the great lemurine group was absent; for it is difficult to understand the spread of such a form as Solenodon, and ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... Besides, we may be sure that by the time at which the edict was issued, Iyeyasu must have heard of many matters likely to give him a most evil opinion of Roman Catholicism:—the story of the Spanish conquests in America, and the extermination of the West Indian races; the story of the persecutions in the Netherlands, and of the work of the Inquisition elsewhere; the story of the attempt of Philip II to conquer England, and of the loss of the two great [313] Armadas. The edict was issued in ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... Jamestown, there were several other staples that also contributed to this result. Of prime importance should be rated maize or Indian Corn. Maize saved the colony from starvation on several occasions. Maize became an export commodity to the New England and West Indian colonies when the price for tobacco fell below the cost of transportation to Europe. Maize aided the colonists in the production of valuable livestock products. This crop has done more to promote the wealth ...
— Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Lyman Carrier

... geologist, who is fully impressed with the vast oscillations of level which have affected the earth's crust within late periods, will not fear to speculate on the recent elevation of the Mexican platform, or, more probably, on the recent submergence of land in the West Indian Archipelago, as the cause of the present zoological separation of North and South America. The South American character of the West Indian mammals [6] seems to indicate that this archipelago was formerly united to the southern continent, and that ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... moments of his life. Thus had he felt when he resolved to take orders, thus, although in a less degree, because he had been doubtful and afraid, had he felt when he heard the Macedonian cry from this West Indian island. He had swayed the crowd also as he had always believed that he could sway crowds if only the spirit would burn in him brightly enough; he had no doubt that he could sway them again, govern them completely ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... had entered into his head to marry his daughter to the Electoral Prince Palatine, and perhaps to give his daughter the appearance of a higher rank by getting himself declared independent prince of some West Indian conquest—Jamaica had attracted his ambition[484]:—a hope not altogether chimerical; for he was still all-powerful with Charles. Foreigners were astonished that he undertook the most extensive negotiations before he had given his sovereign notice of them. ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... now commenced, and the West Indian acquitted herself with great propriety; for although she did not perform so well as the greater part of the company, yet she was never awkward; and when at a loss for the figure, she listened with modesty, and obeyed with precision the rules laid down to ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland

... M. Stanton contributed a frame building in 1867. From 1867 to 1873 several white clergymen officiated, but the selection of a colored minister to take charge of the work was indispensable. Efforts to this end soon followed. Among the clergymen considered were William H. Josephus, a talented West Indian, and William J. Alston, who had been rector of St. Phillip's in New York and of St. Thomas in Philadelphia. John Thomas Johnson, a progressive Negro citizen who in the reconstruction times was Treasurer of the District Government, began ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... power of digestion which is requisite to assimilate such heavy fare; his tongue is not rough, but, as compared with that of ravenous animals, of a very smooth texture; neither are his teeth pointed and rough like a saw, which above all is a distinguishing mark. It is well known that in our West Indian colonies, all the negroes still surviving, who were originally brought over from Africa, have their teeth filed down to this day, which was at first expressly done for the purpose of tearing and eating human flesh. It is probable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various

... than Venice or Saxony, she at once became the most formidable power in the world, dictated terms of peace to the United Provinces, avenged the common injuries of Christendom on the pirates of Barbary, vanquished the Spaniards by land and sea, seized one of the finest West Indian islands, and acquired on the Flemish coast a fortress which consoled the national pride for the loss of Calais. She was supreme on the ocean. She was the head of the Protestant interest. All the reformed Churches scattered over Roman Catholic ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... full of labour—man cannot utter it." This sea which bears us would rot and poison, did it not sweep in and out here twice a day in swift refreshing current; nay, more, in the very water which laps against our bows troops of negro girls may have hunted the purblind shark in West Indian harbours, beneath glaring white-walled towns, with their rows of green jalousies, and cocoa- nuts, and shaddock groves. For on those white sands there to the left, year by year, are washed up foreign canes, cassia beans, and tropic seeds; and sometimes, too, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... tossing on his couch, his soul was disquieted within him {1731.}. He had heard strange news that afternoon, and sleep forsook his eyes. As Count Zinzendorf was on a visit to the court of Christian VI., King of Denmark, he met a West Indian negro slave, by name Antony Ulrich. And Antony was an interesting man. He had been baptized; he had been taught the rudiments of the Christian faith; he had met two other Brethren at the court; ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... now, at last, I was about to compare books with facts, and judge for myself of the reported wonders of the Earthly Paradise. We could scarce believe the evidence of our own senses when they told us that we were surely on board a West Indian steamer, and could by no possibility get off it again, save into the ocean, or on the farther side of the ocean; and it was not till the morning of the second day, the 3d of December, that we began ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... dressed, and the Madeira and claret (the only wines produced) of the best quality. Their host did the honours of his table with true West Indian hospitality, circulating the bottle after dinner with a rapidity which would soon have produced an effect upon less prudent visitors; and when Mr Berecroft refused to take any more wine, he ordered ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat



Words linked to "West Indian" :   Tobagonian, Montserratian, Haitian, Bahamian, Antiguan, West Indies, Anguillan, Cuban, Barbadian, American, Jamaican, Dominican, Grenadian, the Indies



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com