k-fin or two, we saw none in the West Indies, though they were
swarming round us.

The next day the boat's head was turned homewards. And what had
been learnt at the little bay of Alice Biscayen suggested, as we
went on, a fresh geological question. How the outer islands of the
Bocas had been formed, or were being formed, was clear enough. But
what about the inner islands? Gaspar Grande, and Diego, and the
Five Islands, and the peninsula--or island--of Punta Grande? How
were these isolated lumps of limestone hewn out into high points,
with steep cliffs, not to the windward, but to the leeward? What
made the steep cliff at the south end of Punta Grande, on which a
mangrove swamp now abuts? No trade-surf, no current capable of
doing that work, has disturbed the dull waters of the 'Golfo
Triste,' as the Spaniards named the Gulf of Paria, since the land
was of anything like its present shape. And gradually we began to
dream of a time when the Bocas did not exist; when the Spanish Main
was joined to the northern mountains of the island by dry land, now
submerged or eaten away by the trade-surf; when the northern
currents of the Orinoco, instead of escaping through the Bocas as
now, were turned eastward, past these very islands, and along the
foot of the northern mountains, over what is now the great lowland
of Trinidad, depositing those rich semi alluvial strata which have
been since upheaved, and sawing down along the southern slope of the
mountains those vast beds of shingle and quartz boulders which now
form as it were a gigantic ancient sea-beach right across the
island. A dream it may be: but one which seemed reasonable enough
to more than one in the boat, and which subsequent observations
tended to verify.

CHAPTER VII: THE HIGH WOODS

I have seen them at last. I have been at last in the High Woods, as
the primeval forest is called here; and they are not less, but more,
wonderful than I had imagined them. But they must wait awhile; for
in reaching them, though they were only ten miles off, I passed
through scenes so various, and so characteristic of the Tropics,
that I cannot do better than sketch them one by one.

I drove out in the darkness of the dawn, under the bamboos, and
Bauhinias, and palms which shade the road between the Botanic
Gardens and the savannah, toward Port of Spain. The frogs and
cicalas had nearly finished their nightly music. The firefl