mentioned just now. But the curiosity of the tree was a Carat-palm
which had started between its very roots; had run its straight and
slender stem up parallel with the bole of its companion, and had
then pierced through the head of the tree, and all its wilderness of
lianes, till it spread its huge flat crown of fans among the highest
branches, more than a hundred feet aloft. The contrast between the
two forms of vegetation, each so grand, but as utterly different in
every line as they are in botanical affinities, and yet both living
together in such close embrace, was very noteworthy; a good example
of the rule, that while competition is most severe between forms
most closely allied, forms extremely wide apart may not compete at
all, because each needs something which the other does not.

On our return I was introduced to the 'Uncle Tom' of the
neighbourhood, who had come down to spend Sunday at the Squire's
house. He was a middle-sized Negro, in cast of features not above
the average, and Isaac by name. He told me how he had been born in
Baltimore, a slave to a Quaker master; how he and his wife Mary,
during the second American war, ran away, and after hiding three
days in the bush, got on board a British ship of war, and so became
free. He then enlisted into one of the East Indian regiments, and
served some years; as a reward for which he had given him his five
acres of land in Trinidad, like others of his corps. These Negro
yeomen-veterans, let it be said in passing, are among the ablest and
steadiest of the coloured population. Military service has given
them just enough of those habits of obedience of which slavery gives
too much--if the obedience of a mere slave, depending not on the
independent will, but on brute fear, is to be called obedience at
all.

Would that in this respect, as in some others, the white subject of
the British crown were as well off as the black one. Would that
during the last fifty years we had followed the wise policy of the
Romans, and by settling our soldiers on our colonial frontiers,
established there communities of loyal, able, and valiant citizens.
Is it too late to begin now? Is there no colony left as yet not
delivered over to a self-government which actually means, more and
more--according to the statements of those who visit the colonies--
government by an Irish faction; and which will offer a field for
settling our soldiers when t