[Music] it's as beautiful as it is treacherous where Jagged Cliffs meet the loud violence of crashing waves the southeast tip of Saint John known as Ram's Head offers both a picturesque site and tranquil escape from the hustle and bustle of the modern world but even more captivating is the history of the area how centuries ago this location was a passageway to freedom for those who refused to live as slaves hi everyone I'm Denisha John and on today's show we'll continue to explore the island of Saint John more specifically we'll hike to an area known as Ram's Head revered as one of the more sacred places on the island where slaves escape to centuries ago in search of freedom [Music] and of course helping us with this adventure is none other than our good friend olati Davis the journey to Ram's Head begins here on this simple dirt path it seems like most of our adventures begin this way the path leads us to this area that you see here Salt Pond Bay as is the case with almost every Beach on St John this area is visited by thousands of people each year it's located about four miles south of Coral Bay one of the two major towns on the island the base Crystal Clear calm water and white Sandy Shore provides a tranquil and Serene area for beachgoers but the area is also known for its trail that leads to Ram's Head however before we join that trail we'll take a quick detour to the Salt Pond [Music] this two acre Pond is the only Salt Pond in the Virgin Islands that still produces salt [Music] this Sal pan this is in Saint John this is the pan that makes out you start all in the air between April May June need a dry pill we have two wet season in Ireland May starting from August maybe August to November the other wet season enough for the salt to be made it must be dry now Salt Ponds like this one are usually water that are cut off salt when water in the pond evaporates leaving behind the salt mineral then salt upon this sap on it enclose on the salt pan that during storms a hurricane it open and where what happened it flushed the pond out to the open our water come into the pond and it over a period of time it built back up and closed the pan so there's the possibility that this Palm probably opened down in this particular area here especially I've don't even have storms I need to close your eyes back up some 14 South pan it just um I was open but it's enclosed too as well and this is one of the planets enclosed this particular plant milks out so historically the focusing done come here to collect salt to cook because rock salt this is the only pan now we have in the force now that makes up disappear but here this is protected and so your hair earlier in a year you're really getting rack stops this is not the typical season when salt is produced nonetheless as you get close to the water's edge you see that the pond has already begun to form a sud-like substance on the surface be solid you could almost walk out on it and exactly pick up the the crystal the salt crystal from the the pond itself you can see how clear the water is I notice the first thing you'll see a pan look so clear that's so true as compared to to what is in Christ here's an interesting fact Salt Ponds can range in colors from pale green to bright red this color variation depends on the salinity of the pond algae in the water change colors depending on how much salt mineral is in the pond the higher the salinity the brighter red the pond becomes and as mentioned earlier this Pond was the main source of salt for people living on the island decades ago to season and preserve Foods this is this is somebody saw the sea right here see as the sun began to make from the pan this covered entire pan area and over the pewter term the water crystallized and it creates salt basically and they come here and begin to some food even get picking out take it and they put in the in the buckets or horse and carriage and take it back and the grind is such a that's why your great grandparents and my great grandparents collect salt many years ago there was no efficient radar so this is where the area that you decide to cause me to cut off the meat and then the car and they were using salt and they preserved the meat for many many years it's interesting to see how you know our ancestors use a lot of our local our environment to do a lot of the things well the folks who live in Saint John they live very close to Nature they understand nature because nature provides for them and they take care of nature today we're going the opposite we take away from nature a lot and so the people who live here they realize if they destroy it or what they have they have nothing and so this Supply this bar supply um Saint John with a lot of salt very likely to find mangroves as you notice with this particular Sal Pan the water have a kind of Bronx with this color that's the algae in the water and you're not smelling yeah they smell well the reason for that there's no Mangrove close to the water the mango for example they drop the leaf in the water it decomposes in like an organic soup and microorganism they break it down and the fish eat that and then you eat the fish that's right that's why the fish tastes so good so in this Sal pan you see mostly straw plants or what we call Salt Taliban plant planet with salt this pond in particular white and black mangroves parsley this supposedly very good for callaloo you can put inside the rice you can wash this off [Music] um yes calcium you can put it in your eyes and you can stir fry it so when a cocoa rice before the rice finished it washes Off The Leaf cut them up put it on top of the rice I just simmer down and what I think you have the older folks that would say a Young Generation yeah McDonald Kentucky but this uh that's how people survive that's when those days the folks is very strong and healthy as compared to us today and how to get sick so they can walk around here and find plants they can put in a pot and eat we too they don't have that knowledge and then this particular plant this is the Buttonwood so if we got fish poison you get a knife you go down half example you cut the back take the back off and you boil it 40 drink sugar and water when you get fresh poison and you drink that and what it does it over the period of time it eliminate the poison within the system she doesn't want to plan that they use the laugh of his poison locally so is there for any other medicinal purposes they live at the of the plant or use for making a tea and of course it Bears some nice pretty seeds and they use the ornaments yeah okay from this function of Salt Pond we head south on the Rams Head trail about a mile in length the trail is narrow with many turns and many interesting plant species so Mr Davis what's the name of this plant right here your Cali fish poison this particular plant go away back from the Native American hair in a Caribbean here in Saint John I tried the voice now this plant was used by the tahinos to Carib or carlinos and enslaved African up to the early 1960s they will take the plant the Bob off of it they peel it off they put it in a sack and then for example the pan right over there or along the coast or in stream the shake it in the Stream and what it does it's quite have the oxygen in the water and the fish come on top the water and they pick up the fish why so that's one way folks use the catfish so that's where Calif is poison exactly um you want Kelly fish we just got to have the accident paralyzing it more like stunned them and then the face come and float on top of the water and collect it and that's why we did they catch fish so is it poisonous to say humans no you're not quite not quite nice to um to humans now we just saw a plant that was once used to tranquilize fish here is one that was used to treat people who fell ill to fish poison so this one now this plant is not a native plant at the island of xinjiang the color water money pool is the Indian name they use a lot for fish poison they use the back of the plant okay they cut the bag they peel it back off and then the boil it back and water and you drink a cup a cup to a cup maybe two three times a day enjoy the cup and then flush it right out and again a native plant you go along the coast and you can find it Inland too as well adapt pretty well to all condition the Indian used these for a particular purpose on this tree and you can go to our store today and you'll find them they're like this let me see and you can lay down in it a hammock yep from this tree right here hammock is the Indian name so the inner we take this and they will plant them and we cut the tree go right out and it tight under the one tree to one end to the other end and this tree we use as a helmet so they use those twine you see right there sounds like a good idea right about now but there's still more to see on this Trail once again the Ramset Trail runs for about a mile not that long when you think about it but add some sharp turns loose dirt and rocks and an incline and you have yourself a challenging drill but for those who hike the trail coming up on Scenic sites like these make it all worthwhile [Music] [Music] out in the distance our final destination if we don't want to go we're out to the if we do one go out to the cliff you can we can stay in the background here and you can talk about it from here with about half a mile left I think we'll push forward foreign the trail gets interrupted by this Cobble Beach see we're done by Ram's Head Beach around his head Bay we say in the olden days if you see all the coil and along the shore look how pretty the water is sure it is what a sight it's a loop Mr Davis is right it's a beautiful sight but I wouldn't recommend anyone to swim in this Bay these Stones can leave you with some painful memories once we've crossed the bay We Begin our upward climb to the top of Ram's Head immediately one notices the change in vegetation the thick brush and shrubs are replaced by cacti and grass oh okay Mr Davis this is finally it Yep this is Ram's Head very historical site and Saint John this is one of the areas back in 1723 where we had the saved we both over here at Saint John that they control the island for six to eight months in fact since I make history in the Western Hemisphere it first that happened in West Hemisphere and Saint John where is traffic on whole island for the alarm people at them than any other in the Caribbean this area after the the French was the one that the Danish government asked to come to capture the enslaved Africans and when they got here the islamicum jumped over this cliff for the freedom instead of being captured much like Mary's Point like maybe a point okay so this is a very sacred area you notice on this side they have that land from this part of the Caribbean on this side over there is Atlantic Ocean you can see patola from that side over there so this side the island is the Atlantic Ocean and this side is the Caribbean Sea so this is the very secret you go far away down along the cliff so you could just imagine a person leaping from here along this cliff and leaping on this rock to the dead wow all along this Cliff the instantly African just jump over now when he did that we need to leave a concealer being the commission aside but back then to them when I jump over the guy back to Africa so they prefer to be free by jumping over than to be captured and to be tormented or to being killed for example the neck will be cut off they could start them in half they cut off their hand and they prefer to the jump over this cliff let's gruesome and I guess at those time at that time this was this was their escape that does the escape from being captured for those past six or eight weeks so the first time in the history will happen in the western world was Saint John made history Western enslaved Africans control for the period of time now why isn't first of all they had some folks is shaped like a Ram's hair they could see how the Rams Head and this hand like that and also goats Billy Goats they like Cliff they're like this kind of areas along the Cliffs of possibility they gave from the goat the ramps that live here throughout the island but basically um a lot of folks believe it's shaped like a Ram's Head and it just got a name only I mentioned that Estates got name from the topography uh from the geography are from those who own the plantation and give the name by either the data or the Sun or the person or the plantation or the name come from New York because many of the enslave are not instantly but many of the investors came from Europe and the purchase land here and give the land the names and over the years the name have changed and the name have different meaning the for example in before the uh Rick is out we've been hike at with B we've got a name from the valley and that's what it came with the name up with the names okay now it seems like we're pretty high about how high are we this is more than 300 feet above sea level wow and as you look down you see the water look very rough and as you fall you end up hitting the rocks foreign not really but standing on the edge of these Cliffs is a bit nerve-wracking it gives you a sense of what slaves went through to obtain their freedom I Now understand why many have great reverence for this area foreign wow that was quite an experience I must say I really enjoyed learning about this area and experiencing some of the scenic sites that it has to offer now we're not quite through what today's show is yet just two miles west of Ramset there's another popular area within the national park known as lamb survey foreign Bay Trail is one of the many trails on the island of Saint John that attract many visitors to the island the short half-mile Trail leads to what was once the lambsure bay great house there is also a research facility that dates back to 1966 but I think we'll leave that for another time [Music] we are heading towards Bay this is lumps a bit we already the old Danish Road okay in this area here more than 200 years ago sugarcane and Saint John they were terracing for more than 20 years right now what we have is what we call a secondary forests which means they call devoiding fire is done and they cultivate for x amount of years and after that the flowers take over and this is the dry forest area is there any area in Saint John that's still virgin for us yeah we still lose they still have the patches on the on the island okay but the majority the alarm at 90 percent of the islands according to history historians were the forest foreign from this 1718 or the 17th 17. when Denmark claims Saint John as their own so what are we looking at over here this part of the plantation here these ruins are What Remain of the lambster bay estate lead it to a Dane that lived on Saint Thomas the estate was established to produce cotton it was destroyed in the 1733 slavery Vault but restored once again for cotton production eventually the estate became a sugar state that is it began producing sugar up until 1854. and visit the Alamo pen where they keep the animals at night if you look at the area you can see for example you come over here [Music] you see in corals bricks sedimentary rock and all this we've seen here was molasses lime water and Sun that constructed this a lot of the same materials are found throughout the plantation so that was the material that the USA locally and so they keep the animals in here at night and then in the day they go out and they paint them in and that relation continue up up until then the early 70s for me for example my parents there is goats okay my grandparently you should used to take the animals out in a day and at night you should bring them in close to the house if you notice a wrong hair there's other structures the wrong hair so they keep the animal very close to the estate and this would be the estate that they will public not behind us yeah okay so this tradition continue from way back many years ago foreign Davis I see the road goes off into so many different directions what are some of these um roads lead what do they relate to this particular order is lamps of betrayal okay and it heads straight to Reef Bay for example River Factory is 2.8 miles okay the petroglyph a 2.1 miles wristband itself is 1.6 miles and so this lamp the Betrayal connect you to that uh to those other trailers on my left this is border trail that take a one point two miles to Baltimore that's the highest peak is 1200 above sea level the high speed and xinjiang and you can hike right up and you got a good view okay so going back into you know our ancestors and the time before like during I guess slavery and what's not the roads and the different locations what's how significant were they and this rule was built by the Ensley African that live on the road okay and it was built for the Donkey I know this along the way we saw some donkeys and so this robots go back and forth where they carry the sugarcane to the major factories okay what a major factor in this particular era was in risby area so it's the whole world to another historical so today we don't have donkeys and courage we hike to this site okay we're in this area tremendous history this is one of the most favorite part of Saint John the southern part of the island because of the petroglyph and a very good preserved Sugar Factory we're gonna get to see we're gonna get to see okay up to the oil in 1900 it was still an operation if you go there today you just oil it up and start right up really really tight that's how good it is okay I'm looking forward to [Music] where it is from a functioning soft Pond to a historic site that represented Freedom our towards the southeast section of St John proves to be quite a special experience [Music] I hope you enjoyed yourself as much as I did and until next time remember to cherish your home this beautiful island but most of all cherish each other all right [Music] [Music] [Music]