it, since there is nothing to conduct the sound as there is in the case of a top spinning on the floor or table. The humming-birds. and the fireflies with their intermittent flashes of light, the bird in the day time and the firefly at night, make two of the weirdest effects imaginable. At 9 P.M. the Governor gave a ball to about 400 guests in the large new room, which opens out from one end of the drawing-room, and to which many officers came from the ship.

Jan. 17th.-There was to have been a cricket-match between the Bacchantes and the Trinidad club, but it had been so wet in the night that it had to be given up. At 11.30 A.M. started in the train for a ten miles run to San Josef, the old capital of the island, and visited Mr. Giuseppi, senior, where we saw the sugarcane mill, which was set working this morning: the season has been so wet or it would naturally have been at work some weeks ago. We saw the canes being cut by the negroes with their long cutlasses, stripped, piled in the carts, brought into the mill, pressed, the juice run through, then boiled and skimmed. Within twenty-four hours of their being cut the canes must be pressed under a wheel, and the liquid runs off into a trough. It looks like muddy water; it is collected in tanks and clarified with cow's blood or sulphuric acid, as it simmers over the fire. When it ferments they cease to boil it, and put in lime half an ounce to 100 gallons. Then a thick scum rises to the top and as it cools hardens. This cracks on the surface and the liquid molasses sink to the bottom and become syrup and drain away into another cistern. Then it is put in a pan boiler, or vacuum pan. It then becomes a thick toffee-like substance, and is baled out in pails and thrown into centrifugals, with small quantities of water added to whiten it. The revolving oscillators, things like paddle-wheels, which are turned slowly round in the syrup while it is cooling, cause it to ooze out at the perforations, and the sugar remains behind beautifully dry and white. This is the old way of making sugar; we are to see another at the usine at San Fernando. The remaining molasses is re-boiled and subjected to the same process again; and an inferior sugar is the result. From the treacle which remains at last rum is distilled. The negroes and coolies who are working together in the mill seemed much pleased with our visit. We lunched with Mr. Giuseppi in the old house at Van Saine, the drawing-room of which is the identical. one in which the capitulation of the island in February 1797

was signed, on the one side by Don Alonzo Chacon "last and best of the Spanish governors," and by General Abercromby and Admiral Harvey on the other, in which it was stipulated that all "the capitulators and their sons after them should be Englishmen, and counted as such, whether they were French or Spaniards up to that time," and so "I am an Englishman, and proud to be so," said the old gentleman. At lunch too was Mr. Farfan, whose ancestors came to the island in 1640, from one of the oldest families of Spain. It is curious to observe how both the French and Spanish here have become such out-and-out Englishmen : they dread nothing so much as the withdrawal of British rule, which would mean their being absorbed by the republic of Venezuela over the water and falling back into a state of chaos. Trinidad in fact, from its large and varied resources, nearly wholly undeveloped, and its excellent geographical position, bids fair to become, not many years hence, one of the most valuable possessions of the British Crown. The island contains over a million acres of fertile soil; only a tenth part is now cultivated; nearly the whole of the remainder is unappropriated Crown land. The population is less than that of Barbados (though in extent it is three times as large as that island). Commercially, Trinidad takes the lead of British Guiana and every British West Indian colony, without exception. With its teeming soil and salubrious climate, it is capable of supporting over a million inhabitants, ten times the number that it now does. The government is administered by a Governor, with an Executive Council of three members (the colonial secretary, the attorney-general, and the senior military officer). The legislative body is a council of six official and eight unofficial members, all of whom are appointed by the Crown from representative residents, the only object being to get the ablest and most competent advisers on local matters. Sir Arthur Gordon, the late Governor, established a capital system of public education in the colony, and the present Governor has done much for remodelling taxation. Before his time all uncultivated lands were taxed a shilling an acre and the cultivated lands five shillings an acre, which was a premium on keeping the land uncultivated. But now all land, whether cultivated or not, is taxed one shilling an acre, to the great advantage of the colony, as each man has everything to gain by clearing and cultivating his holding. The same principle has been carried out as regards import dues everything brought to the island was heavily taxed,

VOL. I.

G

but the Governor has persuaded his council to sweep away all these dues, and to make the Port of Spain a free port; the only three things that pay duty on entrance are spirits, tobacco, and kerosine oil. Since this ordinance was passed, the commerce of course has greatly increased. The imports have doubled themselves in ten years, and now stand at nearly three millions sterling, the exports at about the same figure. Ultimately all taxation will be reduced, and locomotion by rail will pay for all the expenses of government. Not many English come out here from home, as some capital is required for taking up land as cleared. Yet why should they not, if fond of the tropics? Two hundred acres will cost 2007. to buy; on this say 3,000l. would have to be spent spread over six years, or perhaps even up to the end of the tenth year. This would then (they say) give a net income of 1,4007. for fifty years at least. This is in cacao planting. (Law, How to Establish and Cultivate an Estate of One Square Mile in Cacao, 1865.) This year the survey of the island has been completed, and the boundaries of the provinces and estates laid down with some approach to accuracy, though out and away the largest portion of the island is still virgin soil or primeval forest. It is to be feared that previous to this there were many forged certificates of land, and much peculation, by unprincipled coloured officials who misbehaved themselves in other ways, but who have been lately routed out.

We each planted two trees, one on either side of the road up which Sir Walter Raleigh advanced to San Josef when he landed in the Caroni river. We returned to Port of Spain by train, riding on the engine, and then drove to the new police barracks, over the airy rooms and passages of which we went, and then saw the volunteers, who were drawn up in the quadrangle below, put through their drill, and so home. Walked with Mr. Prestoe through the Botanical Gardens and chose some orchids to be sent to Sandringham, including one called Spirito Santo, the flower of which is exactly like a dove, and another, called the Lady's Slipper, very pretty. We wanted to get the seeds or cuttings of some of the many odd-shaped flowers that go trailing and twisting about so fantastically and are of all sorts of colours. But the gardener told us the seeds would not bear exporting, they invariably lose their fructifying power during trans-shipment to England. Saw the grove of dark-leaved nutmeg trees laden with their bright yellow fruit, slit at the side and showing the red mace and nut in the interior; also the clove plants

on which the cloves form before the flower comes; then to the calabash-trees and the cannon-ball tree, the fruit of which is as large as a sixty-eight pounder (roundshot), an unpleasant sort of thing to have fall on your head; it is not used for any purpose. Saw also the papaw tree, under the leaves of which if a piece of tough meat is hung it becomes tender in a few hours, and then the bread-fruit tree, with large green fruit and deeply cut leaves a foot or more across, and the banana, "the lush fat green stem, the crown of huge leaves falling over in curves, and below the whorls of green or golden fruit, with the purple spike dangling and protruding below them and all the product of a few months, for not one lives

:

more than a year." Lastly we saw the "Scotch lawyer," a huge climbing and aspiring creeper, who while young attaches himself to some strong and flourishing tree, and by the increase of his own growth gradually overpowers that to which he had at the beginning clung for support, and then with vigorous pertinacity increases his power over the poor thing until he overwhelms its independence, and at the end flourishes over the ruins of his former support. Just before we started to go down to the pier we heard the sound of the rain coming from the distance; you can hear it beating on the leaves of the trees on the hillside a long way off, until, as it gradually comes nearer and nearer, it sounds literally just like the

roar of a torrent. We drove down to the jetty and caught the six o'clock officers' boat off to the ship. So ended our visit to Sir Henry Irving. He has been very kind to us, and we have learnt much from him whilst staying this week ashore in his cool and airy house. This evening Captain Lord Charles Scott and the officers gave a dinner to the officers of the 4th Regiment.

January 18th we spent quietly on board, and there were the usual services. In the afternoon we were reading and writing, and at night turned in early.

Jan. 19th.-All the forenoon was spent in preparing the upper deck for an afternoon dance. The awnings were spread and lined. inside with the foreign ensigns, which are long enough to hang down over the hammock nettings. Many flowers were sent off by Mr. Prestoe for decoration, and with them the brake of the poop and the rails round the hatchways were covered. All was completed by 1 P.M. and looked very pretty, but the rain threatened to spoil it. However at 3 P.M. the Governor and his aide-de-camp, the colonial secretary, Mr. Sendall, and others came off. There were over two hundred guests in all, for whose convenience one large steamer was chartered, and brought them all off together across the three miles that lay between us and the jetty; she came alongside the Bacchante so that they could all walk on board. They continued dancing till 6 P.M. Smoking was at the after end of the poop behind a screen of flags: ices were served in the chart house, drinks and light refreshments under the poop. There was a good deal of cheering as the steamer left with the guests for the shore, some of whom hoped the island would not be forgotten because it was so far from its great mother, but that we would sometimes. think of them and help them along.'

Jan. 20th.-At 10 A.M. weighed and proceeded southwards down the bay under steam, having previously embarked Sir Henry Irving, and suite. The eastern shore of the Gulf of Paria is flat and mangrove-covered, broken only at one point by the conical hill of San Fernando, which we passed, and arrived at La Brea some thirty-six miles south, still in the Gulf of Paria, at 1.30 P.M., where we anchored in five fathoms. We landed in the steam pinnace on the black-pitch beach and walked up to the Pitch Lake, rather more than a mile and about 138 feet above the sea. The road is black with pitch, but there is much vegetation on either side, and negro huts and gardens full of flowers, white and yellow and purple. The pine-apples of La Brea are famous; the heat of