Excerpt from West Indian Tales of Old The Caribbean Sea, which has been aptly described as the cockpit of the Empire, will shortly undergo a striking change. From being a mere cul-de-sac it will, now that the Panama Canal is completed, become one of the world's principal ocean highways and trade routes. One result of this will certainly be that an increasing number of visitors will patronise the British West Indian islands, and it occurred to me that it might be an opportune moment to re - tell, for their benefit, some of the tales connected with the West Indies, whose history is surrounded by a wealth of romance. Such is the origin of the present volume, in the compilation of which I have received much valuable assistance from Mr. N. Darnell Davis, the Hon. Arthur W. Holmes a Court, Mr. Cecil Headlam, Mr. Edgar Tripp, Mr. F. Sterns-fadelle, Mr. Oscar Plummer, Mr. G. H. King, and other kind friends to whom I desire to express my indebtedness. I G \q 1 I A. E. A. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.