nted wings, and a tail. Line for line, there the figure was
before me, which in the unforgetable tail-piece is driving the thief
under the gallows, and I had a melancholy satisfaction in identifying
him. I had been warned to be on the lookout for scorpions, centipedes,
jiggers, and land-crabs, who would bite me if I walked slipperless over
the floor in the dark. Of these I met with none, either there or
anywhere, but the mosquito of Trinidad is enough by himself. For malice,
mockery, and venom of tooth and trumpet he is without a match in the
world.

From mosquitoes, however, one could seek safety in tobacco-smoke,
or hide behind the lace curtains with which every bed is provided.
Otherwise I found every provision to make life pass deliciously. To walk
is difficult in a damp, steamy atmosphere, hotter during daylight than
the hottest forcing-house in Kew.... Beautiful, however, it was beyond
dispute. Before sunset a carriage took us around the savanna. Tropical
human beings, like tropical birds, are fond of fine colors, especially
black human beings, and the park was as brilliant as Kensington Gardens
on a Sunday. At nightfall the scene became even more wonderful, air,
grass, and trees being alight with fireflies, each as brilliant as an
English glow-worm. The palm-tree at our own gate stood like a ghostly
sentinel clear against the starry sky, a single long dead frond hanging
from below the coronet of leaves and clashing against the stem as it was
blown to and fro by the night-wind, while long-winged bats swept and
whistled over our heads.

[The governor's residence and the botanical gardens next call
for attention.]

The "Residence" stands in a fine situation, in large grounds of its own,
at the foot of the mountains. It has been lately built, regardless of
expense, for the colony is rich, and likes to do things handsomely. On
the lawn, under the windows, stood a tree which was entirely new to me,
an enormous ceiba or silk-cotton-tree, umbrella-shaped, fifty yards in
diameter, the huge and buttressed trunk throwing out branches so massive
that one wondered how any woody fibre could bear the strain of their
weight, the boughs twisting in and out till they made a roof over one's
head, which was hung with every fantastic variety of parasites.

Vast as the ceibas were which I saw afterwards in other parts of the
West Indies, this was the largest. The ceiba is the sacred tree of the
negro, the temple of Jumbi