"I always wanted to see the Islands. I really did. I just hate missing the Islands. Maybe we can come back some day."

Yes indeed. I would have truly enjoyed showing her the islands. How the big aluminum plant and the oil refinery of Amerada Hess blacken the stinking skies over St. Croix. Maybe she'd like the San Juan Guayama and Ybucoa areas of Puerto Rico where Commonwealth Oil, Union Carbide, Phillips Petroleum, and Sun Oil have created another new industrial wasteland where the toxic wastes have killed the vegetation, where hot oil effuents are discharged into the sea and flow westward along the shoreline in a black rolling stench, killing all sea life.

She might be impressed were I to cruise into Tallabea Bay and describe to her the one and a half billion tons of untreated wastes from Commonwealth-Union Carbide which put a two foot coat on the bottom of the bay. Or we could take a tour up into the mountains to watch how the trade winds carry the bourbon-colored stink of petro-chemical stacks through the passes all the way to Mayaguez, ninety miles from the refineries. While in the hills, we could check and see if Kennecott Copper and American Metal Climax have started to strip-mine the seven square green tropic miles of high land which they covet.

It might have made quite an impression.

(from the novel, THE SCARLET RUSE [pages 256 and 257] by John D. MacDonald, copyright 1973 by John D. MacDonald Publishing, Inc, published by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc, )