it is said, therein--alas
for the inkstains on that beautiful floor! And by last advices, a
'troupe of artistes' from Martinique, there being no theatre in Port
of Spain, have been doing their play-acting in it; and Terpsichore
and Thalia (Melpomene, I fear, haunts not the stage of Martinique)
have been hustling all the other Muses downstairs at sunset, and
joining their jinglings to the chorus of tom-toms and chac-chacs
which resounds across the Savannah, at least till 10 p.m., from all
the suburbs.

The road--and all the roads round Port of Spain, thanks to Sir Ralph
Woodford, are as good as English roads--runs between the Savannah
and the mountain spurs, and past the Botanic Gardens, which are a
credit, in more senses than one, to the Governors of the island.
For in them, amid trees from every quarter of the globe, and gardens
kept up in the English fashion, with fountains, too, so necessary in
this tropical clime, stood a large 'Government House.' This house
was some years ago destroyed; and the then Governor took refuge in a
cottage just outside the garden. A sum of money was voted to
rebuild the big house: but the Governors, to their honour, have
preferred living in the cottage, adding to it from time to time what
was necessary for mere comfort; and have given the old gardens to
the city, as a public pleasure-ground, kept up at Government
expense.

This Paradise--for such it is--is somewhat too far from the city;
and one passes in it few people, save an occasional brown nurse.
But when Port of Spain becomes, as it surely will, a great
commercial city, and the slopes of Laventille, Belmont, and St.
Ann's, just above the gardens, are studded, as they surely will be,
with the villas of rich merchants, then will the generous gift of
English Governors be appreciated and used; and the Botanic Gardens
will become a Tropic Garden of the Tuileries, alive, at five o'clock
every evening, with human flowers of every hue with human

CHAPTER V: A LETTER FROM A WEST INDIAN COTTAGE ORNEE

30th December 1869.

My Dear-----, We are actually settled in a West Indian country-
house, amid a multitude of sights and sounds so utterly new and
strange, that the mind is stupefied by the continual effort to take
in, or (to confess the truth) to gorge without hope of digestion,
food of every conceivable variety. The whole day long new objects
and their new names have jostled each other