e Gulf of Paria. The two entrances by which the gulf is
approached are narrow, and are called _bocas_, or mouths,--one the
Dragon's Mouth, the other the Serpent's. When the Orinoco is in flood
the water is brackish, and the brilliant violet hue of the Caribbean Sea
is changed to a dirty yellow; but the harbor which is so formed would
hold all the commercial navies of the world, and seems formed by nature
to be the depot one day of an enormous trade.

[Landing was made at Port of Spain, the capital, so called when
Trinidad was a Spanish possession, and Mr. Froude found
pleasant quarters in the house of a friend.]

The town has between thirty and forty thousand people living in it, and
the rain and the Johnny crows [a black vulture that acts as scavenger]
between them keep off pestilence. Outside is a large savanna or park,
where the villas are of the successful men of business. One of these
belonged to my host, a cool, airy habitation, with open doors and
windows, overhanging portico, and rooms into which all the winds might
enter, but not the sun. A garden in front was shut off from the savanna
by a fence of bananas. At the gate stood as sentinel a cabbage-palm
a hundred feet high; on the lawn mangoes, oranges, papaws, and
bread-fruit-trees, strange to look at, but luxuriantly shady. Before
the door was a tree of good dimensions, whose name I have forgotten,
the stem and branches of which were hung with orchids which G----
had collected in the woods.

[Illustration: A WATERFALL IN THE TROPICS]

The borders were blazing with varieties of the single hibiscus, crimson,
pink, and fawn-color, the largest that I had ever seen. The average
diameter of each single flower was from seven to eight inches. Wind
streamed freely through the long sitting-room, loaded with the perfume
of orange-trees; on table and in bookcase the hand and mind visible of a
gifted and cultivated man. The particular room assigned to myself would
have been delightful, but that my possession of it was disputed, even
in daylight, by mosquitoes, who for blood-thirsty ferocity had a bad
pre-eminence over the worst that I had ever met with elsewhere. I
killed one who was at work upon me, and examined him through a glass.
Bewick, with the inspiration of genius, had drawn his exact likeness as
the devil,--a long black stroke for a body, a nick for a neck, horns on
the head, and a beak for a mouth, spindle arms, and longer spindle legs,
two poi