Montserrat
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
one of the Lesser Antilles, belonging to Great Britain; 27 miles S. W. of Antigua; length about 11 miles, breadth 7 miles; area 32 square miles; pop. about 12,000. The surface is very mountainous and heavily timbered. Sugar and limes and lime juice are the principal products. The island, ruled by a president and a legislative council, is the healthiest in the West Indies. The island was discovered in 1493, and colonized by the British in 1632. It has remained in their hands ever since, except for two short intervals (1664-1668 and 1782-1784), when it was in the possession of France. Chief town, Plymouth. MONT ST. ELOI, Flanders, Belgium. Scene of action between British and Germans, Mar. 12, 1915. The Germans blew up part of the height and in a dashing advance overwhelmed the British trenches around it, and won a considerable stretch of defenses. At 9 p. m. the British organized a counter-attack which was carried out by two companies of the Royal Irish, the Leinster Regiment, and the 4th Rifles in support, commanded by Colonel Prowse. The British fought until daybreak, winning some trenches, but leaving the Germans in possession of the Mont and front trenches. Their losses were 40 officers and 680 men killed, wounded, and missing. MONT ST. MICHEL (mông sang mēshel'), a steep, fortified, isolated rock, in Mont St. Michel Bay, off the coast of the department of Manche, France. On its summit is an irregular town, with an abbey and a church dating from the 11th century. Its ancient castle, formerly : prison, has been restored. Its solid ramparts date from the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries; in 1880 it was connected by a dyke with the mainland. The whole bay, 15 miles wide at the mouth, 8 miles N. to S., is nearly dry at low water.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921 it named Plymouth as the chief town and called Montserrat the healthiest island in the West Indies, with about 12,000 people living on sugar, limes and lime juice. The Soufrière Hills volcano, dormant through all those centuries, began erupting in July 1995; Plymouth was buried in ash and pyroclastic flows and abandoned, and a 1997 eruption killed 19 people. Roughly two-thirds of the island is now an off-limits exclusion zone and the population has fallen to around 4,000 to 5,000, clustered in the north around Brades and Little Bay. Montserrat remains British, as Collier's noted it had been almost continuously since 1632, but it is now a British Overseas Territory heavily dependent on UK aid rather than on lime juice.
Written for this edition, 2026.