Meanwhile  St.  Croix,  which  is  neither  geographically,  geologically,
nor  historically  a  bona  fide  member  of  the  Virgin  group,  had  been  hav-
ing a  history  of  its  own.  The  Knights  of  Malta  colonized  it  first
with  three  hundred  Frenchmen,  but  these  soon  decided  that  Santo
Domingo  offered  better  real  estate  possibilities.  Then  when  the  Dutch
and  the  British  had  concluded  that  France  had  a  better  armed  right  to
it,  the  latter  sold  it  to  the  Danish  Company  for  750,000  livres.  Just
how  much  that  was  in  real  money  I  am  not  in  a  position  to  state,  be-
yond the  assertion  that  it  would  buy  far  more  then  than  it  will  nowa-
days. Thenceforth  St.  Croix  has  followed  the  fate  of  the  other  Dan*
ish  West  Indies.
Many  of  the  colonists  were  disturbers  of  the  peace  or  agitators,,
the  Bolshevists,  in  short,  of  those  days,  who  found  it  to  their  ad--
vantage to  abandon  the  near-by  French  and  British  Leeward  Islands.
