Today in Postal History
This wrapper was sent from Castries
on the northwest side of the island.
Castries
is a port city and the capital of St. Lucia.
Castries' harbor is the site of the crater of an ancient volcano.
Saint Lucia is in the
middle of the Windward Islands on the east side of the Caribbean.
There are two CDS marking the wrapper's departure.
The destination was Freetown.
Freetown is the capital of Sierra Leone.
Sierra Leone is squeezed in
between Guinea and Liberia on the west coast of Africa.
There are no transit or receiving marks on this side.
Such postal markings for wrappers are unusual as the contents,
generally newspapers,
were sent at an economy rate and were not accorded time-sensitive
service.
The wrapper is a 1d. with a carmine Victorian indicia.
The wrapper has been uprated with a 1d. King Edward VII key plate dull
purple and carmine (SG 59 or 66 depending on the paper and watermark).
A paragraph describing the usage is imprinted on the wrapper.
(Here is a better scan of the paragraph
on wrapper usage.)
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