it under cultivation, the rest natural
forest and unappropriated Crown land.

We passed the 'Dragon's Jaws' before daylight. The sun had just risen
when we anchored off Port of Spain. We saw before us the usual long line
of green hills with mountains behind them; between the hills and the sea
was a low, broad, alluvial plain, deposited by an arm of the Orinoco and
by the other rivers which run into the gulf. The cocoa-nut palms thrive
best on the water's edge. They stretched for miles on either side of us
as a fringe to the shore. Where the water was shoal, there were vast
swamps of mangrove, the lower branches covered with oysters.

However depressed sugar might be, business could not be stagnant. Ships
of all nations lay round us taking in or discharging cargo. I myself
formed for the time being part of the cargo of my friend and host Mr.
G----, who had brought me to Trinidad, the accomplished son of a
brilliant mother, himself a distinguished lawyer and member of the
executive council of the island, a charming companion, an invaluable
public servant, but with the temperament of a man of genius, half
humorous, half melancholy, which does not find itself entirely at home
in West Indian surroundings.

On landing we found ourselves in a large foreign-looking town, 'Port of
Spain' having been built by French and Spaniards according to their
national tendencies, and especially with a view to the temperature,
which is that of a forcing house and rarely falls below 80 deg.. The streets
are broad and are planted with trees for shade, each house where room
permits having a garden of its own, with palms and mangoes and coffee
plants and creepers. Of sanitary arrangements there seemed to be none.
There is abundance of rain, and the gutters which run down by the
footway are flushed almost every day. But they are all open. Dirt of
every kind lies about freely, to be washed into them or left to putrefy
as fate shall direct. The smell would not be pleasant without the help
of that natural scavenger the Johnny crow, a black vulture who roosts on
the trees and feeds in the middle of the streets. We passed a dozen of
these unclean but useful birds in a fashionable thoroughfare gobbling up
chicken entrails and refusing to be disturbed. When gorged they perch in
rows upon the roofs. On the ground they are the nastiest to look at of
all winged creatures; yet on windy days they presume to soar like their
kindred, and when far up might b