THE EIGHTH CONTINENT

long ago they say when the sky was not so high the passing Sun let false and emerald jewels into the dark blue sea a chav islands that we have called the eighth continent the little world of canopy and sunshine and year-long spring [Music] in 1493 Columbus came here after a long voyage of hardship scurvy and mutiny [Music] now the journey to the islands is quicker and a good deal easier [Music] debate the gloried Columbus and later the Spanish conquistadores was El Dorado the legendary City of Gold strangely what they sought and yet could not see was there all the time the gold of the Sun the gold of the beaches the glitter on the sea lavish enough for the greediest adventurer now we know that the Sun itself is a golden gift and a marvelous freedom rose from it [Music] the first tribes have lived here have left us two gentle memories and little else the hammock and tobacco symbols of leisure and pleasure that still dictate the slow tempo of the life of these islands [Music] in the wild seafaring days of the 16th century any attempt to settle for golden sunlight and acquired pastimes would have been greeted with laughter doubloons it had to be and Pieces of Eight and my doors and sovereigns and the Caribbean quickly turned into the colonial cockpit of Europe when three centuries of lack judgment and good old-fashioned ferocity had run their course each island was neatly a parcel that in such a way that America still has half of Europe on its doorstep [Music] the British got Grenada and some George's the capital became an English country turn somehow the Sun always takes a hand in making things a little bit diffuse here you get your snapshots develop to the barbers shoes mended at the piano tuners and the bus delivers the milk and despite the polite Georgian exteriors of Grenada the Prince of Wales once found himself refused to dance here it happened at a party in 1778 for which the future William the fourth had dressed up as a joke in one of his midshipman's uniforms and was consequently not recognized amazing the difference a uniform can make [Music] somehow seeing policemen in traditional nineteenth-century British uniforms makes it all feel like a well arranged and friendly place [Music] when history said it was time to bring on the backin ears there was the island of some Thomas perfectly placed strategically for a bit of privateering on the Spanish Main it's worth a walk along the beaches here for the odd memory of them still turns up on the tide the so-called gentlemen urge done by monarchs with a weakness for profitable plunder use the deepwater harbour of Charlotte Amalie as their home port Sir Francis Drake and his rather less respectable successors Captain Kidd and Blackbeard found this a safe Anchorage and a good place for selling beauty [Music] there's and Thomas was long since bought by the United States from Denmark the atmosphere of high adventure with Scandinavian a Vuitton's still lingers but now the chief occupation for visitors is finding about him for this is a free port and the shoppers dream come true [Music] the special thing about some Thomas is it's nice relaxed feeling of Greenwich Village [Music] to defend his Island possession of Puerto Rico the Spanish king built the fortress of El Morro little realizing that in doing so he would above all be preserving a Spanish Way of life in the Caribbean building the fortress was so expensive that he thought it must be of tremendous height and he is reported to appeared anxiously from the balconies of his palace in Spain hoping to see it rise about the distant horizon the old streets and squares of San Juan are very Spanish it isn't just the siesta and the manana in the air that make you feel this summer there always seems to be time for enjoying things that are nothing to do with housework nor with earning money [Music] then again once the door has been opened to you there's that quiet and closed very private courtyard feeling and the houses you've never guess that this is a hotel it's only a few hours flight from New York it feels like the courtyard of a well-ordered Hacienda somewhere near Seville [Music] the French nurse of Martinique has a different quality and especially notice it if you begin in san pierre underneath Montpellier it was once the little Paris of the Caribbean but in May 1902 it became the Pompeii of the islands and the whole side of the mountain blew out leaving a lone survivor badly burned in his prison cell nothing else was left but scattered fragments of elegance [Music] the farming even is languid here but the soil brings forth such riches that in Paris they used to judge you rich as a Creole plantation owner and if you look even in an apparently humble farm cottage we could still stumble upon an exotic memory the romantic Creole wife of Napoleon was born and brought up here the Empress Josephine pearl of the Antilles [Music] this is France under a warmer sound the philosopher fragments of elegance just the right amount of refined decay the French Way of life maths on Sunday morning carnival and Sunday afternoon and don't forget it was here that the beginning began [Music] Martinique is a sultry female place it was here that Paul Gauguin first felt and painted this alchemy of cinnamon skin and warming a Sun the fits of history have put Europe into the sunshine here in the Caribbean and have made an extraordinary pattern of warm reviving Islands each with its own particular mood that you can choose to fit your own [Music] [Music]