The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-24
From the New York Sun.

From the New I 1OrK sun.
 l The news that Great Britain is going to | fortify Trinidad as an offset to the pro-
 jected fortification of the Panama canal
 by the United States, and the intimation | that other islands might be furnished with defenses and the British fleet increased | in these waters, bring to mind the time when England regarded the West Indies as her most important outpost, when great fleets of men-o'-war cruised and | fought there under her flag. and when she spent millions of pounds sterling erecting works and arming them with | cannon and filling their magazines with linexhaustible supplies of powder and ball. That was the time when Rodney and | Keppel fought the French with varying | fortune, when Horatio Nelson, the smart young captain of the smart frigate Boreas, married tho widow Nisbet in the old Figtree church in Nevis. It was the | time when the same Nelson chased the | French fleet under Villeneuve from Tou- lon to Barbados and back again to Cadiz and Trafalgar This was the time when England built that great fortress on Birthstone Hill in the beautiful and historic island of St. Kits, which was spoken of about loo years ago as the Gibraltar of the West Indies.'' It Is a ruin today. Donkeys are stabled in its casemates, and the lit- tie cows of the island graze in its ample enclosures The goats and chickens run about it almost wild.
 It is worth while going to St. Kits just to visit the ruins on Birthstone hill, not to speak of the hundred other charms of the place. From the crest of the old works there is view so lovely that you can hardly believe it is real The dark l old chambers, deep in the massive ma- sorry, the shadowry covered ways, the l heated stone courts snow white in the glare of the tropic sun, are peopled with the ghosts of a bygone day. Dead men,
 dead wars, dead ambitions personal and
 national, dead policies Jostle each other in your memory while your feet tange themselves fin the weeds that have over grown the espanades where men once marched and drilled.
 You pay sixpence to get into the fort
 but first let us locate it definitely. It is distant some eight miles northwest from Basse Terre. locally pronounced
 Basseteer in three syllables. which is
 the slow. decayed little capital of the
 island. You drive from Basse Terre to
 the hill over the government road which
 runs all around the island, that wonder
 full road 90 miles in length which cuts
 off the knees of hills and reaches across
 ravines, wide. hard, smooth, splendid
 highway like a Roman road, with revet-
 ments of solid masonry in one place hold
 ing back the hill that threatens to over whelm it, in another keeping the road itself from slipping down into the sea.
 All the many curious incidents of those eight miles of road must be omitted here.
 Every road offers a bid to the stranger to finger and explore. We must just shut our eyes and let the sturdy pony
 jog along at that marvellous swift pace
 which he changes neither on the up or down slope nor yet on the level. Of course, it is still forenoon: you have started after 9 O clock breakfact The Caribbean sea In its inexpressibe blue stretches away to your left. and there are white boat sails, like seabirds, dotted over 1t here and there. Cocoanut palms, singly, in single file. in clusters, give the scene that airy grace peculiar to the West Indian islands. The sun simply saturates the atmosphere with golden light which throws up the color of every visible object in itse deepest significance as does the gilded background of an old picture the light greens and yellows of the canefields in the foreground, the luxuriant olive hues of the forests cloth ing the shoulders of Mount Misery, the volcanic pinnacle of the island towering gloomy and mystic into its perpetual fieecy veil of rain cloud, the white of the houses, the gray of the old windmills. the red roofs of the negroes huts. the black of the tall iron chimneys that tower above the sugar factories.
 A sinuosity of the road brings Brim- stone Hill Into view. Long, by compari- son low--its elevation is 800 feet or so, while that of the mountain spire just be- hind it is not far from 30O0-it frowns upon the peaceful fields about and upon the shining sea. For the most part 1t is of a dirty yellow hue, a sort of ochre, fbo hot oh 1lrv li,,o c,,ff from iron stain But here and there where the slope Is not too steep, bunch of wild vegetation has found a hold on the rock and mottles it with a whole gamut of verdure.
 The hill is in sight for couple of miles of road before it is reached. The approach brings out one by one the de- tails of it's grim countenance. Long lines of crenelated masonry become grotesaue- ly suggestive of rows of teeth. The ruin ous aspect which they assume on nearer inspection still more grotesquely suggests the mpotency of great age and utter neg lect, which is the crude truth today of the one time strong place." There is plenty of opportunity to study the great nat ural fortress and the Improvements that have been wrought upon 1t by the best martial talent of Britain, for you drive well past it before arriving at the pr- vate way, which branches from the main road and carries you up to the outer bastions. blindng white way of hard packed chalk from which a dust as ten uous as smoke rises through the air and then settles down over everything in a thin gray film
 This white road goes up between fields into a deep ravine. then turns sharply on itself to shelf on the hillside, winding up and up from level to level through a grove of redwood and mountain palms in abrupt sinuosties like a dead snake In the grass. It stops at a good sized wooden house In the midst of primitive farmyard. A miniature COW or two and a goat are tethered In the shade. duck waddles in vagrant Till the cocks and hens and guinea fowl strut or lumber among the weeds.
 If is here you nav your sixpence and