FORTS AND
FORTIFICATIONS.
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party of Caribs, who came yearly from some of the neighbouring islands, in order to smoke their calumets of peace with that gentleman. To the southward of Parham rises a curious hill, which is supposed to be the work of art, and to have answered for the burying-place of the ancient inhabitants, the Caribs. An old writer speaking of this tumulus, describes it as " in form a long square, very regular in all its parts, lessening gradually from its base to the top, which is flat, and may be from five to six hundred feet long, and from forty to fifty feet high."
CHAPTER XXVII. Forts and fortifications—Temporary ones—The present forts—Fort James—Its situation and approach—Rat Island Battery, its appellation, lunatic asylum, and flag-staff—Goat Hill—Steep ascent— Schools in St. John's.
might be imagined that where nature has done so much for her favourite isle in the way of barricading it, by giving to Antigua a bold rocky coast, art, in the shape of forts and batteries, would be less called for. This, however, is not the
IT
case ; the island coaster meets with many an embattled point, and many a sea-girt cliff supports the frowning walls of a battery. The forts in Antigua are Fort James, Rat Island Battery, Goat Hill or Fort Barrington, Old Fort, Johnston's Point Fort, Old Road Fort, Falmouth Fort, Fort Black's Point, Fort Charlotte and Fort Berkley at the entrance of English Harbour, Fort Christian, Fort Isaac, Fort William, Fort Harman, Flat Point Fort, Old Fort, and Fort Byam; Parham Harbour, Dickenson's Point Battery, Corbison's Fort, and Fort Hamilton. Of these, the greater part were merely temporary fortifications erected in those days of warfare when the French and Caribs, in their shallops and perrigoas,