St Thomas

St Thomas, one of the Virgin Islands in the West Indies, belongs to Denmark, and lies 36 miles E. of Puerto Rico. Area, 33 sq. m.; pop. 14,389, 8632 of them women, and nearly 600 Jews. English is the language of the educated classes. The surface is lilly (1555 feet) and the soil poor. The cultivation of vegetables, guinea grass, and a small quantity of cotton employs the scanty rural population. The port, Charlotte Amalie or St Thomas (pop. 12,000), was formerly a busy emporium for the European trade with the West Indies, the harbour in which the merchant fleets assembled to wait for their convoys, and later the principal port of call in the West Indies. All these advantages have now passed from it. Before the abolition of slavery it was covered with prosperous sugar-plantations. The island is often visited by earthquakes, but they are not, as a rule, so destructive as the cyclones. It was first colonised by the Dutch in 1657. The British held it in 1667-71, 1801, 1807-15.