k vultures sitting on roof-ridges, or stalking about in
mid-street--are the flowers which show over the walls on each side
of the street. In that little garden, not thirty feet broad, what
treasures there are! A tall palm--whether Palmiste or Oil-palm--has
its smooth trunk hung all over with orchids, tied on with wire.
Close to it stands a purple Dracaena, such as are put on English
dinner-tables in pots: but this one is twenty feet high; and next
to it is that strange tree the Clavija, of which the Creoles are
justly fond. A single straight stem, fifteen feet high, carries
huge oblong-leaves atop, and beneath them, growing out of the stem
itself, delicate panicles of little white flowers, fragrant
exceedingly. A double blue pea {74} and a purple Bignonia are
scrambling over shrubs and walls. And what is this which hangs over
into the road, some fifteen feet in height--long, bare, curving
sticks, carrying each at its end a flat blaze of scarlet? What but
the Poinsettia, paltry scions of which, like the Dracaena, adorn our
hothouses and dinner-tables. The street is on fire with it all the
way up, now in mid-winter; while at the street end opens out a green
park, fringed with noble trees all in full leaf; underneath them
more pleasant little suburban villas; and behind all, again, a
background of steep wooded mountain a thousand feet in height. That
is the Savannah, the public park and race-ground; such as neither
London nor Paris can boast.

One may be allowed to regret that the exuberant loyalty of the
citizens of Port of Spain has somewhat defaced one end at least of
their Savannah; for in expectation of a visit from the Duke of
Edinburgh, they erected for his reception a pile of brick, of which
the best that can be said is that it holds a really large and
stately ballroom, and the best that can be hoped is that the
authorities will hide it as quickly as possible with a ring of
Palmistes, Casuarinas, Sandboxes, and every quick-growing tree.
Meanwhile, as His Royal Highness did not come the citizens wisely
thought that they might as well enjoy their new building themselves.
So there, on set high days, the Governor and the Lady of the
Governor hold their court. There, when the squadron comes in,
officers in uniform dance at desperate sailors' pace with delicate
Creoles; some of them, coloured as well as white, so beautiful in
face and figure that one could almost pardon t