We slept a night in the harbour, the town having just then a clean bill of health; and were very glad to find ourselves, during the next few days, none the worse for having done so.

On remarking, the first evening, that I did not smell the harbour after all, I was comforted by the answer that--'When a man did, he had better go below and make his will.' It is a pity that the most important harbour in the Caribbean Sea should be so unhealthy.

No doubt it offers advantages for traffic which can be found nowhere else: and there the steamers must continue to assemble, yellow fever or none.

But why should not an hotel be built for the passengers in some healthy and airy spot outside the basin--on the south slope of Water Island, for instance, or on Buck Island--where they might land at once, and sleep in pure fresh air and sea-breeze?
The establishment of such an hotel would surely, when once known, attract to the West Indies many travellers to whom St.Thomas's is now as much a name of fear as Colon or the Panama.
We left St.Thomas's by a different track from that by which we came to it.

We ran northward up the magnificent land-locked channel between Tortola and Virgin Gorda, to pass to leeward of Virgin Gorda and Anegada, and so northward toward the Gulf Stream.
This channel has borne the name of Drake, I presume, ever since the year 1575.