Famous Single Poems
were crawling slowly along,” Kingsley writes, “looking out for Virgin Garda; the first of those numberless isles which Columbus, so goes the tale, discovered on St. Ursula’s day, and named them after the saint and her eleven thousand mythical virgins. Unfortunately, English buccaneers have since given to most of them less poetic names. The Dutchman’s Cap, Broken Jerusalem, The Dead Man’s Chest, Rum Island, and so forth, mark a time and race more prosaic.”
The English names will doubtless seem to aiany readers much more picturesque than the colorless virgins’; but however that may be, Kingsley’s narrative identifies Dead Man’s Chest as one of the Virgin Islands. Curiously enough, it may be doubted if it ever was really called “Dead Man’s Chest.” Present-day maps give its name as “Dead Chest Island,” and that is the name it has been known by, on the maps at least, for a century and a half. It is so given on Neptune Occidental, A Complete Pilot of the West Indies, published by Thomas Jeffreys at London in 1782. Kingsley possibly made a mistake in the name, as he did in one of the others—for “Broken Jerusalem” should be “Fallen Jerusalem”—a most fortunate mistake, surely, since without it there would have been no “Fifteen men,” and perhaps even no Treasure Island!
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