in itself, was
sure to be the parent of a hundred other wrongs.

Being, happily for me, in the Governor's suite, I had opportunities
of seeing the interior of the island which an average traveller
could not have; and I looked forward with interest to visiting new
settlements in the forests of the interior, which very few
inhabitants of the island, and certainly no strangers, had as yet
seen. Our journey began by landing on a good new jetty, and being
transferred at once to the tramway which adjoined it. A truck, with
chairs on it, as usual here, carried us off at a good mule-trot; and
we ran in the fast-fading light through a rolling hummocky country,
very like the lowlands of Aberdeenshire, or the neighbourhood of
Waterloo, save that, as night came on, the fireflies flickered
everywhere among the canes, and here and there the palms and Ceibas
stood up, black and gaunt, against the sky. At last we escaped from
our truck, and found horses waiting, on which we floundered, through
mud and moonlight, to a certain hospitable house, and found a hungry
party, who had been long waiting for a dinner worth the waiting.

It was not till next morning that I found into what a charming place
I had entered overnight. Around were books, pictures, china, vases
of flowers, works of art, and all appliances of European taste, even
luxury; but in a house utterly un-European. The living rooms, all
on the first floor, opened into each other by doorless doorways, and
the walls were of cedar and other valuable woods, which good taste
had left still unpapered. Windowless bay windows, like great port-
holes, opened from each of them into a gallery which ran round the
house, sheltered by broad sloping eaves. The deep shade of the
eaves contrasted brilliantly with the bright light outside; and
contrasted too with the wooden pillars which held up the roof, and
which seemed on their southern sides white-hot in the blazing
sunshine.

What a field was there for native art; for richest ornamentation of
these pillars and those beams. Surely Trinidad, and the whole of
northern South America, ought to become some day the paradise of
wood carvers, who, copying even a few of the numberless vegetable
and animal forms around, may far surpass the old wood-carving
schools of Burmah and Hindostan. And I sat dreaming of the lianes
which might be made to wreathe the pillars; the flowers, fruits,
birds, butterflies, mon