ed, Daniel begged him not to
be alarmed; he was only chastising a rascal to teach him his duty. At
any rate, as Labat observed, he had effectually prevented the rascal
from doing anything of the same kind again. Mass being over, the body
was thrown overboard, and priest and congregation went their several
ways.

Kingsley's 'At Last' gave Trinidad an additional interest to me, but
even he had not prepared me completely for the place which I was to see.
It is only when one has seen any object with one's own eyes, that the
accounts given by others become recognisable and instructive.

Trinidad is the largest, after Jamaica, of the British West Indian
Islands, and the hottest absolutely after none of them. It is
square-shaped, and, I suppose, was once a part of South America. The
Orinoco river and the ocean currents between them have cut a channel
between it and the mainland, which has expanded into a vast shallow lake
known as the 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 blue of the Caribbean Sea is
changed to a dirty yellow; but the harbour 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.

Trinidad has had its period of romance. Columbus was the first
discoverer of it. Raleigh was there afterwards on his expedition in
search of his gold mine, and tarred his vessels with pitch out of the
famous lake. The island was alternately Spanish and French till Picton
took it in 1797, since which time it has remained English. The Carib
part of the population has long vanished. The rest of it is a medley of
English, French, Spaniards, negroes, and coolies. The English, chiefly
migratory, go there to make money and go home with it. The old colonial
families have few representatives left, but the island prospers, trade
increases, coolies increase, cocoa and coffee plantations and indigo
plantations increase. Port of Spain, the capital, grows annually; and
even sugar holds its own in spite of low prices, for there is money at
the back of it, and a set of people who, being speculative and
commercial, are better on a level with the times than the old-fashioned
planter aristocracy of the other islands. The soil is of extreme
fertility, about a fourth of