# So What Happened Fifty Years Ago on St. Croix? *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 20 Jan 2001* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Talarican *20 Jan 2001, 23:32* No sooner did I crack my newly delivered used copy (Scribner's edition) of 5HC, but what should appear to my eyes but the following: Number Five, to "Dr. John V. Marsch" (actually Victor Trenchard in disguise), who has just appeared at 666 Saltimbanque for the first time, inquiring for Aubrey Veil, "...there are fewer people here now than there were fifty years ago." Of course in typical Wolfean sleight-of-typewriter, they abruptly go off on a tangent about Mr. Million, rather than discuss this issue any further. If I were compiling IAQ's on 5HC (it could happen!), this would certainly be one of them. Why did the population of Port-Mimizon, perhaps all of St. Croix and perhaps St. Anne as well (Number Five of course didn't make it clear precisely to what population he referred), decline over a period long after the war? Being a lazy sort, rather than do my own research from scratch, I availed myself of the timeline so generously provided by Mantis and Mr. Borski in his "Cave Canem" site. According to Mantis, two significant things occurred within a few years of that time: On St. Croix, Maitre was born (or decanted, or whatever). On St. Anne, Old Culot had his last encounter with an abo, which his grandson recounted for Dr. Marsch some forty years later. And I know what thoughts are stirring out there, even now: this could be connected to the Veil scenario in some fashion. For example, "abo-like" abos such as the one Old Culot encountered disappeared from St. Anne about that time as they replaced the human population? Talarican ---