Untitled article by Harper

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · December 17, 1867

St. Thomas, West Indies.

By Harper

It appears, though unofficially stated, that the United States has purchased the island of St. Thomas, West Indies, “with all the rights, titles, inhabitants, floods, and hurricanes thereunto pertaining.”

The island of St. Thomas, one of the group called the Virgin Isles, with the Isles of St. John and Tortola, a few miles apart from it, occupies the most convenient position in the West Indian archipelago for the rendezvous of the mail steam-packets and other vessels plying to and fro between this country and the colonies in that part of the world. It has an area of only 24 square miles, and a population of only about 15,000 inhabitants. The soil is sandy and not very fertile. Only about 2,500 acres are under cultivation, and cotton and sugar-cane are the principal crops. The port of St. Thomas is its chief value and attraction; it is open to the commerce of all nations, and is capable of “floating the navies of the world.” The port is visited by about 3,000 vessels annually. Its chief value to the United States will be as a coal station and rendezvous for our fleets.—Harper.