| A
barrier reef runs along the Atlantic side of the dry Canouan
Island. It is outlined with rounded hills beneath the “Maho”,
a 900-foot tall Mount Mahoult, which is, recorded the highest
point on the island. Two bays, Glossy and Friendship, separate
the southern side of the Canouan Island.
The beautiful Canouan Island is just 25 miles south of St.
Vincent and the Grenadines who in 1871 to 1969 was part of
the British colony of the Windward Islands. In 1979, the island
became independent with a secure democratic government based
on the British system. History marks more than 200 years before
Christ; a cultivated tribe called the Arawaks arrived on bunker
canoes to the island. These new residents brought fire-burners,
plants and animals, basic farming and fishing skills with
them. They lived in peace for 1500 years until a tribe of
fierce fighters called the Caribs, invaded and killed the
Arawak men and took off with their woman.
More than 200 years after Columbus was questioned to have
ever laid eyes on St. Vincent, the Europeans established a
kind of permanent settlement. Its mountainous and heavily
forested geography allowed the Caribs to defend against European
settlement here longer than on almost any other island in
the Caribbean.
After the Caribs were defeated on other islands they joined
slaves who had escaped repression on Barbados by following
the current of trade winds westward to St. Vincent, as well
as those who had survived shipwrecks near St. Vincent and
Bequia.
The mixed descendants of the island warriors and the freed
Africans (who became known as the Black Caribs), with their
common distrust and disgust for the Europeans, proved to be
a fearsome foe.
The Caribs feared complete domination so they allowed the
French to construct a settlement on the island in 1719. The
French brought slaves to work their plantations. By 1748,
St. Vincent a Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle officially declared
impartial by Britain and France.
St. Vincent is the only Caribbean country allowed to hunt
whales, where a small group of hunters carries on the tradition
off the small island of Bequia.
| 
