Soon logs and stumps, standing out of the water, marked the mouth of the Caroni; and we had to take a sweep out seaward to avoid its mud-banks. Over that very spot, now unnavigable, Raleigh and his men sailed in to conquer Trinidad.
On one log a huge black and white heron moped all alone, looking in the mist as tall as a man; and would not move for all our shouts. Schools of fish dimpled the water; and brown pelicans fell upon them, dashing up fountains of silver. The trade-breeze, as it rose, brought off the swamps a sickly smell, suggestive of the need of coffee, quinine, Angostura bitters, or some other febrifuge. In spite of the glorious sunshine, the whole scene was sad, desolate, almost depressing, from its monotony, vastness, silence; and we were glad, when we neared the high tree which marks the entrance of the Chaguanas Creek, and turned at last into a recess in the mangrove bushes; a desolate pool, round which the mangrove roots formed an impenetrable net. As far as the eye could pierce into the tangled thicket, the roots interlaced with each other, and arched down into the water in innumerable curves, by no means devoid of grace, but hideous just because they were impenetrable. Who could get over those roots, or through the scrub which stood stilted on them, letting down at every yard or two fresh air-roots from off its boughs, to add fresh tangle, as they struck into the mud, to the horrible imbroglio? If one had got in among them, I fancied, one would never have got out again. Struggling over and under endless trap-work, without footing on it or on the mud below, one must have sunk exhausted in an hour or two, to die of fatigue and heat, or chill and fever.
Let the mangrove foliage be as gay and green as it may—and it is gay and green—a mangrove swamp is a sad, ugly, evil place; and so I felt that one to be that day.
The only moving things were some large fish, who were leaping high out of water close to the bushes, glittering in the sun. They stopped as we came up: and then all was still, till a slate-blue heron [{122a}] rose lazily off a dead bough, flapped fifty yards up the creek, and then sat down again. The only sound beside the rattle of our oars was the metallic note of a pigeon in the high tree, which I mistook then and afterwards for the sound of a horn.
On we rowed, looking out sharply right and left for an alligator basking on the mud among the mangrove roots. But none appeared, though more than one, probably, was watching us, with nothing of him above water but his horny eyes. The heron flapped on ahead, and settled once more, as if leading us on up the ugly creek, which grew narrower and fouler, till the oars touched the bank on each side, and drove out of the water shoals of four-eyed fish, ridiculous little things about as long as your hand, who, instead of diving to the bottom like reasonable fish, seemed possessed with the fancy that they could succeed better in the air, or on land; and accordingly jumped over each other’s backs, scrambled out upon the mud, swam about with their goggle-eyes projecting above the surface of the water, and, in fact, did anything but behave like fish.
This little creature (Star-gazer, [{122b}] as some call him) is, you must understand, one of the curiosities of Trinidad and of the Guiana Coast. He looks, on the whole, like a gray mullet, with a large blunt head, out of which stand, almost like horns, the eyes, from which he takes his name. You may see, in Wood’s Illustrated Natural History, a drawing of him, which is—I am sorry to say—one of the very few bad ones in the book; and read how, ‘at a first glance, the fish appears to possess four distinct eyes, each of these organs being divided across the middle, and apparently separated into two distinct portions. In fact an opaque band runs transversely across the corner of the eye, and the iris, or coloured portion, sends out two processes, which meet each other under the transverse band of the cornea, so that the fish appears to possess even a double pupil. Still, on closer investigation, the connection, between the divisions of the pupil are apparent, and can readily be seen in the young fish. The lens is shaped something like a jargonelle pear, and so arranged that its broad extremity is placed under the large segment of the cornea.’
These strangely specialised eyes—so folks believe here—the fish uses by halves. With the lower halves he sees through the water, with the upper halves through the air; and, elevated by this quaint privilege, he aspires to be a terrestrial animal, emulating, I presume, the alligators around, and tries to take his walks upon the mud. You may see, as you go down to bathe on the east coast, a group of black dots, in pairs, peering up out of the sand, at the very highest verge of the surf-line. As you approach them, they leap up, and prove themselves to belong to a party of four-eyes, who run—there is no other word—down the beach, dash into the roaring surf, and the moment they see you safe in the sea run back again on the next wave, and begin staring at the sky once more. He who sees four-eyes for the first time without laughing must be much wiser, or much stupider, than any man has a right to be.
Suddenly the mangroves opened, and the creek ended in a wharf, with barges alongside. Baulks of strange timbers lay on shore. Sheds were full of empty sugar-casks, ready for the approaching crop-time. A truck was waiting for us on a tramway; and we scrambled on shore on a bed of rich black mud, to be received, of course, in true West Indian fashion, with all sorts of courtesies and kindnesses.
And here let me say, that those travellers who complain of discourtesy in the West Indies can have only themselves to thank for it. The West Indian has self-respect, and will not endure people who give themselves airs. He has prudence too, and will not endure people whom he expects to betray his hospitality by insulting him afterwards in print. But he delights in pleasing, in giving, in showing his lovely islands to all who will come and see them; Creole, immigrant, coloured or white man, Spaniard, Frenchman, Englishman, or Scotchman, each and all, will prove themselves thoughtful hosts and agreeable companions, if they be only treated as gentlemen usually expect to be treated elsewhere. On board a certain steamer, it was once proposed that the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company should issue cheap six-month season tickets to the West Indies, available for those who wished to spend the winter in wandering from island to island. The want of hotels was objected, naturally enough, by an Englishman present. But he was answered at once, that one or two good introductions to a single island would ensure hospitality throughout the whole archipelago.
A long-legged mule, after gibbing enough to satisfy his own self-respect, condescended to trot off with us up the tramway, which lay along a green drove strangely like one in the Cambridgeshire fens. But in the ditches grew a pea with large yellow flower-spikes, which reminded us that we were not in England; and beyond the ditches rose on either side, not wheat and beans, but sugar-cane ten and twelve feet high. And a noble grass it is, with its stems as thick as one’s wrist, tillering out below in bold curves over the well-hoed dark soil, and its broad bright leaves falling and folding above in curves as bold as those of the stems: handsome enough thus, but more handsome still, I am told, when the ‘arrow,’ as the flower is called, spreads over the cane-piece a purple haze, which flickers in long shining waves before the breeze. One only fault it has; that, from the luxuriance of its growth, no wind can pass through it; and that therefore the heat of a cane-field trace is utterly stifling. Here and there we passed a still uncultivated spot; a desolate reedy swamp, with pools, and stunted alder-like trees, reminding us again of the Deep Fens, while the tall chimneys of the sugar-works, and the high woods beyond, completed the illusion. One might have been looking over Holm Fen toward Caistor Hanglands; or over Deeping toward the remnants of the ancient Bruneswald.