Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1902-05-03
TO BE CONTINUED.
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DANISH WEST INDIES.
United States the Last OF Many Diff
ferent POsSeHsors.

United States the Last OF Many Diff
ferent Possessors.
Those Danish West India islands Of
St. Thomas, St. John and st. CroiX-
the last more conveniently called San
ia Cruz, Holy Cross or Holy Rood
are attracting much more attention IN
their last transfer than any Of them
ever did when they passed from hand
to hand without attracting the least
attention in days gone by. Those days
gone by were the generations from
that of Columbus to that Of Black
beard. In those two centuries the Less
er Antilles were something Of a No
mans archipelago, swarming with pi-
rates, the several islands not noted or
registered in the fflcial maps OF the
European ministries, but claimed and
occupied now by one nationality, now
byanother, sometimes as St. Kits was
for many generations, shared in toler-
ally amicable fashion by both Dutch
and English settlers.
AS for St. Thomas and st. John,
with the diminuendo series named by
Columbus 1.-The Virgins" so gradual
ly lessening, in size that 1t Is hard TO
say where they cease to be ISLANDS
and become mere "cays," all the wa
ters about here must have seemed to
the buccaneers Of the seventeenth
century specially designed to be their
refuge by an all-wise Providence TO
this day "Blackbeard's Castle" an old
paradox Of a tower, looks down on
Charlotte Amalie, the only city III
St. Thomas. Blackboard, Of course,
did not belong to the seventeenth CEN
tury. and iconoclasts say that the old
tower was erected by the Danish gov
ernment, but Blackboard was pirate
of the olden time, and until 1871, when
the King of Denmark obtained formal
possessesion Of st. Thomas and. st.
John, the harbor on which Charlotte
Amalie now stands was second only to
that of Port Royal, Jamaica. In pirat-
ical Importance. To the east, toward
the Virgins and st. John, the Gays and
reefs made an effective breakwater,
within which ships could venture only
when the pilots knew certain secrets
of the buccaneer navigators, and this
curiously locked tract Of sea was de-
voutly known to those whom 1t pro-
tected as 1.-The Virgins Roads," leading
TO the still safer Corral Of ST. John,
the name Of which the English quaint
ly corrupted into Crawl Bay
Considering that while all these mer-
ry doings Of the four West Indian ma
tions-Spanish. English, French and
Dutch-were on foot Denmark was
taking no part, officially or unofficial
| ly, in the exploitation Of the New Worlo
It Is natural to wonder how that small
kingdom ever came to hoist its flag
where it Is now preparing TO lower 1t.
The explanation Is easier when 1t is
noted that Denmark is, even at the
present moment, only officially the oc-
cupant of the islands in question.
|
white people on st. Thomas, and. prob
ably. a much smaller proportion on st.
John or Santa Cruz, speak Danish
The Negroes of st. Thomas, truly re-
markable linguists as they are. speak
Danish as fuently and as badly as they
sneak any other tongue. but the white
mans language of those Islands Is the
white mans language of Manhattan.
The ACQUISITION of st. Thomas and st.
John was a court enterprise, and re-
calls in the telling an interesting
phase of political development in the
realm of Hamlet's father.
| The date of 1860, when England and
Scotland were just making up Lnelr
minds to have done with the uncrown-
ed. Cromwellian type of autocracy ana
give the Stuarts another chance, COM
cides with the maturity of curlously
contrasting movement in Denmark.
Instead of monarchial absolutism' the
masses of the Danish people like the
Roman proletariat of Caesars tlfle'
had to struggle against the oligarcm-
cal oppression of the nobility. Instead
of abolishing or checking monarchy
they we're intent upon making mon
achy the bulwark of liberty against
aristocracy. The result was that rev.
olution, in the reign of Christian "
which established for time, as fun
damental rule of the Danish constitu-
ton, the principle that the KING
should have in his own hands whatso-
ever power could be proved to be pos
sessed by the rulers of any other states
in their respective dominions.'
Naturally, Christian ', after TINS
was not in a position to lean confden-
TALLY upon his nobility. What he need
ed was a powerful class of traders
such as the East India company hao
developed in England, to counterpart
ance in the feudal magnates. 1t was
doubtless with this end in his own
view of the situation that Christian
established the Danish company OF
Guinea and the West Indies. and for