Crossword-Solution: CULEBRA 7 letters, 4 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 11

Why, before I joined the navy I didn't know whether Guam was a vegetable or an island, and Culebra wasn't in my geography.

Going with Puerto Rico are two small islands called Culebra and Vieque, mainly inhabited by fishermen, but with fine forests of dye and cabinet woods to be exploited.

Almost before I was well started I found myself in another town, yet larger than Culebra and with the name "Empire" in the station building; and nearly every rod of the way between had been lined with villages of negroes and all breeds and colors of canal workers.

The way led round a cone-shaped hill crowned by another military camp with the Stars and Stripes flapping far above, until I came at last in sight of the renowned Chagres, seven miles above Culebra, to all appearances a meek and harmless little stream spanned by a huge new iron bridge and forbidden to come and play in the unfinished canal by a little dam of earth that a steam-shovel will some day eat up in a few hours.

There was deep disappointment in face and voice as she sat down with a flounce of her starched and snow-white skirt, gasping: "Oh, Doctah, does I HAVE to have silver fillings?" My room-mates, "Mitch" and "Tom," sat respectively at the throttle of a locomotive that jerked dirt-trains out of the "cut" and straddled a steam-shovel that ate its way into Culebra range.