On Wednesday we left Portsmouth and sailed south to Dominica's capital Roseau. We toured the island by car on Thursday and took short hikes to Trafalgar Falls and Emerald Pool where we had a refreshing swim under a water fall. We then drove to Carib country on the east side of the islands where the Caribs were pushed to live after the French and English battled and killed most of them.

There is an interesting story about when the English fighting with the Caribs in Chris Doyle's Guide to the Leeward Islands. The Governor of St. Kitts had a son with a Carib woman and took him to leave with his English wife and kids in St. Kitts. When he died, his stepmom persecuted the son of the Carib woman, Warner, and he moved to Dominica where he became a chief. The story goes that Warner helped the English and remained in good terms with his half brother, Phillip. But St. Kitts people hated the Caribs because of the many wars they had had with them. One story says that Phillip came to St. Kitts with his troups, held a feast for his half brother Warner and his tribe, plied them with brandy and then signal his troups to massacre the whole tribe, including his brother. The other story says that Phillip and Warner got together and massacre the whole Carib tribe and that Warner was later killed in a brawl after the battle. Whatever the truth is, what is the case is that the Caribs were massacred in what is today the town of Massacre and that after this the Caribs went to Marie Galant and massacred many Europeans living there.

Touring Carib country was very interesting as most people have Indian features, with golden skins and black straight hair. Many of them have mixed with blacks and the result are very beautiful looking people with mixed black and Indian features. We stopped at a small hut where a Carib woman was selling her crafts. She had been recognized by others in the island and abroad for her preserving the crafts of the caribs. She spoke English with an accent different from that of the blacks and told us a little bit about growing up as a Carib in Dominica. We show a picture of her in the album of pictures from our Dominica trip - see entry about the Valley of Desolation and Boiling Lake for a link to the pictures.