as well as in Paris. And (so goes the story) he succeeded;
but the fair Creoles would not buy it. It could not be good; it could
not be the real article, unless it had crossed the Atlantic twice to and
fro from that centre of fashion, Paris. So the manufacture, which might
have added greatly to the wealth of Trinidad, was given up, and the
ladies of the island eat naught but French chocolate, costing, it is
said, nearly four times as much as home-made chocolate need cost.

As we walked on through the trace (for the tramway here was still
unfinished), one of my kind companions pointed out a little plant, which
bears in the island the ominous name of the Brinvilliers. It is one of
those deadly poisons too common in the bush, and too well known to the
negro Obi-men and Obi-women. And as I looked at the insignificant weed,
I wondered how the name of that wretched woman should have spread to
this remote island, and have become famous enough to be applied to a
plant. French negroes may have brought the name with them; but then
arose another wonder. How were the terrible properties of the plant
discovered? How eager and ingenious must the human mind be about the
devil's work, and what long practice--considering its usual slowness
and dulness--must it have had at the said work, ever to have picked
out this paltry thing among the thousand weeds of the forest as a tool
for its jealousy and revenge! It may have taken ages to discover the
Brinvilliers, and ages more to make its poison generally known. Why not?
As the Spaniards say, "The devil knows many things, because he is old."
Surely this is one of the many facts which point towards some immensely
ancient civilization in the tropics, and a civilization which may have
had its ugly vices and have been destroyed thereby.

Now we left the cacao grove; and I was aware on each side of the trace
of a wall of green, such as I had never seen before on earth, not even
in my dreams,--strange colossal shapes towering up a hundred feet and
more in height, which, alas! it was impossible to reach, for on either
side of the trace were fifty yards of half-cleared ground, fallen logs,
withes, huge stumps ten feet high, charred and crumbling, and among them
and over them a wilderness of creepers and shrubs, and all the luxuriant
young growth of the "rastrajo," which springs up at once whenever the
primeval forest is cleared,--all utterly impassable. These rastrajo
forms, of course, were all new t