1778. St. Lucia, he held, would render Martinique and the other
islands of little use in war, owing to its windward situation and
its good harbours; for from St. Lucia every other British island
might receive speedy succour. He advised that the Little Carenage
should be made a permanent naval station, with dockyard and
fortifications, and a town built there by Government, which would,
in his opinion, have become a metropolis for the other islands. And
indeed, Nature had done her part to make such a project easy of
accomplishment. But Rodney's advice was not taken--any more than
his advice to people the island, by having a considerable quantity
of land in each parish allotted to ten-acre men (i.e. white yeomen),
under penalty of forfeiting it to the Crown should it be ever
converted to any other use than provision ground (i.e. thrown into
sugar estates). This advice shows that Rodney's genius, though,
with the prejudices of his time, he supported not only slavery, but
the slave-trade itself, had perceived one of the most fatal
weaknesses of the slave-holding and sugar-growing system. And well
it would have been for St. Lucia if his advice had been taken. But
neither ten-acre men nor dockyards were ever established in St.
Lucia. The mail-steamers, if they need to go into dock, have, I am
ashamed to say, to go to Martinique, where the French manage matters
better. The admirable Carenage harbour is empty; Castries remains a
little town, small, dirty, dilapidated, and unwholesome; and St.
Lucia itself is hardly to be called a colony, but rather the nucleus
of a colony, which may become hereafter, by energy and good
government, a rich and thickly-peopled garden up to the very
mountain-tops.

We went up 800 feet of steep hill, to pay a visit on that Morne
Fortunee which Moore and Abercrombie took, with terrible loss of