weathered all the ills to which even a West Indian Island can be
subject, she succumbed--to the price of sugar. Her great families
drifted away one by one. Her estates were given over to the agent for a
time, finally to the mongoose. The magnificent stone mansions, left
without even a caretaker, yielded helplessly to the diseases of age, and
the first hurricane entering unbarred windows carried their roofs to the
sea. In Charles Town, the capital since the submergence of James Town in
1680, are the remains of large town houses and fine old stone walls,
which one can hardly see from the roadstead, so thick are the royal
palms and the cocoanut trees among the ruins, wriggling their slender
bodies through every crevice and flaunting their glittering luxuriance
above every broken wall.

But in the days when the maternal grandparents of Alexander Hamilton
looked down a trifle upon those who dwelt on other isles, Nevis recked
of future insignificance as little as a beauty dreams of age. In the
previous century England, after the mortification of the Royalists by
Cromwell, had sent to Nevis Hamiltons, Herberts, Russells, and many
another refugee from her historic houses. With what money they took
with them they founded the great estates of the eighteenth century, and
their sons sent their own children to Europe to become accomplished men
and women. Government House was a miniature court, as gay and splendid
as its offices were busy with the commerce of the world. The Governor
and his lady drove about the Island in a carriage of state, with
outriders and postilions in livery. When the Captain-General came he
outshone his proud second by the gorgeousness of his uniform only, and
both dignitaries were little more imposing than the planters themselves.
It is true that the men, despite their fine clothes and powdered
perukes, preferred a horse's back to the motion of a lumbering coach,
but during the winter season their wives and daughters, in the shining