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. For in the account of that fatal, though successful
voyage, which cost the lives both of Sir John Hawkins, who died off
Porto Rico, and Sir Francis Drake, who died off Porto Bello, where
Hosier and the greater part of the crews of a noble British fleet
perished a hundred and fifty years afterward, it is written in
Hakluyt how--after running up N. and N.W. past Saba--the fleet
'stood away S.W., and on the 8th of November, being a Saturday, we
came to an anker some 7 or 8 leagues off among certain broken Ilands
called Las Virgines, which have bene accounted dangerous: but we
found there a very good rode, had it bene for a thousand sails of
ships in 7 & 8 fadomes, fine sand, good ankorage, high Ilands on
either side, but no fresh water that we could find: here is much
fish to be taken with nets and hookes: also we stayed on shore and
fowled. Here Sir John Hawkins was extreme sick' (he died within ten
days), 'which his sickness began upon newes of the taking of the
Francis' (his stern-most vessel). 'The 18th day wee weied and stood
north and by east into a lesser sound, which Sir Francis in his
barge discovered the night before; and ankored in 13 fadomes, having
hie steepe hiles on either side, some league distant from our first
riding.

'The 12 in the morning we weied and set sayle into the Sea due south
through a small streit but without danger'--possibly the very gap in
which the Rhone's wreck now lies--'and then stode west and by north
for S. Juan de Puerto Rico.'

This northerly course is, plainly, the most advantageous for a
homeward-bound ship, as it strikes the Gulf Stream soones