Dominica is one of the two islands in the Antilles that still has a Carib population. The other was St. Vincent and, since we probably weren't going to go to St. Vincent because of security problems in the 80's, we decided to check out the reservation on Dominica.

    Years ago, the Carib Indians used to be warlike cannibals, but recently they have settled down to the vaguely tamer art of basket-making. (No, these are not gut-string baskets.) So, we headed off to admire their baskets.

    We could hardly tell that we were in the reservation, when we got there. All the people looked almost the same, if a little lighter-skinned, though there aren't many pure light-skinned Caribs anymore. All the houses looked like poor-men's houses on Dominica, with a few exceptions, basically walls and a floor, with a corrugated-metal roof, supported on thick sticks or cinderblocks.

    We saw the cutest kitten there -- if you would call a flat-faced pug cute. It truly looked almost the same. The kitten's face was flat, with little beady eyes, but I would still call it cute.

    And as it turned out, we did go admire baskets. They were intricately woven out of something, possibly palm fronds or banana leaves, with creative patterns and colors. We bought one -- to be brought back to the boat and used as a candy-basket.