Roraima and British Guiana, With a Glance at Bermuda, the West Indies, and the Spanish Main

by J. W. Boddam-Whetham

In smells, Port of Spain vies with St. Pierre. Our rooms were sometimes unbearable from the odour of salt fish, raw onions, potatoes, and coffee, which ascended from the provision stores underneath, and equalled in intensity the fumes from the small courtyard in which a cow, goats, pigs, a sheep, puppies, naked black children, and parrots wandered at liberty. Often did we exclaim with Mrs. Partington, “How flagrant it is!” Perhaps these odours account for the number of chemists’ and druggists’ shops that exist in Port of Spain. But the outskirts of the town are fresh and bright. Pretty houses and lovely gardens line the approaches to the park-like savanna. The only blot on the fair scene, is an unsightly building—originally erected for the Duke of Edinburgh—which stands in a conspicuous position, unrelieved by a tree or flower.

On approaching Queen’s House, which is situated in the Botanical Gardens, the eye rests on, what to me, was the most charming sight in or around Port of Spain. Grand clumps of the most magnificent bamboos here line the roadside. Splendid ceibas, tamarinds, and samans are dotted about close by, but to my mind, could not compare with the bamboos, whose feathery arches and drooping boughs seemed like a “forest fit to fringe fairy land.” The gardens disappointed me, perhaps from over-expectation. Unlike those of Martinique, nature has not here granted a picturesque situation. Art has only partially succeeded in rendering the grounds attractive. There are many beautiful varieties of palms, deep-green nutmeg groves, towering erythrinas, ceibas, and various rare shrubs and trees, but there is something wanting to make up an effective whole. The gardens are of small extent and are deficient in any leading feature of special interest. There are no fountains, no pieces of water, no falls, no rockeries, and the only flower-garden proper is a small one under the windows of Queen’s House. Great care and attention are bestowed on the gardens, and in the nurseries I saw some rare orchids, luxuriant ferns, and many species of begonias, caladiums, and morantas. I was also shown some Liberian coffee trees, whose berries were far larger than the common. Formerly, there was a small Zoological collection here, but that is of the past.

The drive round the savanna in the cool evening is a very pleasant one. Here a black game of cricket is going on, amid much laughter and noise; there a white one is being conducted, in a very sedate and orderly fashion. Near the ugly Prince’s building is a croquet lawn, and close to the opposite Grand Stand an impromptu race has been organized. Moon-eyed Chinese trot along, with a basket of vegetables slung at one end of a long bamboo and a bundle of clean clothes at the other. Delicate-looking cattle are being led to water by still more delicate-looking Indian coolies, and scattered over the grass are brilliant patches of colour, caused by the gay robes of Hindoo women, whose arms and ancles, heavily hung with bangles, glitter brightly as they milk soft-eyed cows, to the music of laughing babies riding astride their hips.

Coolie immigration from India has been very successful in Trinidad and Demerara, and speaks well for the system of labour which has been adopted in those places. And, certainly, the coolies have no cause for complaint. From the time they leave India until they return there—that is if they choose to return—every suitable provision is made for their comfort. Unlike the Chinese, whose only object is to make money and get back to the Celestial Empire as soon as possible, the Indian coolies become attached to their new home, and in Trinidad a great number—nearly three thousand—have obtained grants of land instead of “return” passages, and have settled down as colonists. Many of them possess sugar estates, and one owns several good race-horses.

Hindoo villages are seen in many parts of the island, and near Port of Spain, on the road to St. James’s Barracks, is a coolie village, so oriental in its character, even to its native priests, charmers, and prayer-house, that, if an aeronaut suddenly descended there, he might readily imagine himself near Calcutta.

From the moment a stranger sets foot in Trinidad, he recognises that he is in a flourishing island; and the more he sees and hears of it, the more convinced does he become of its prosperous future. In the large and busy town, he can form some estimate of its resources, but, when he visits the interior and more distant regions, the fertility of the soil speaks for itself. To use one of Jerrold’s witticisms, the land is so fertile “that, if you tickle it with a hoe, it smiles with a flower.” Though sugar is the chief produce, there are other staples to which Trinidad directs her attention in a greater degree every year. The chief of these is cacao, which is a product continually increasing in value, and which is admirably adapted to the soil. Apart from the ease with which it is cultivated and prepared, a cacao plantation is a very desirable one, on account of its beauty. It has none of the monotonous stretches of a sugar plantation, as cacao has to be protected from the sun.

In some picturesque valley, or on undulating slopes, with a forest background, and probably with a glorious sea view from a neighbouring hill, you see a dwarf forest whose trees are about the size of apple-trees, and on whose stems and red-brown branches grow hundreds of pods like great golden lemons. Through this forest, run rows of “bois immortelles”—Madres del cacao—tall, elm-like trees, with bright flame-coloured canopies which afford a complete shade. On an eminence stands the white house of the planter, and near it a few rustic cottages and provision grounds; there is no tall smoking chimney, no din of machinery, no mingling of negro and molasses, all is cool and quiet, and you feel that, out of the few agricultural pursuits in the tropics, that of cacao-growing, must be the pleasantest.

Around Port of Spain the absence of bird life makes a sad void in nature; one misses the humming-birds, which in Martinique dart from every shrub, and even visit the balcony-flowers in the town. Even at a distance inland, it is only occasionally that the yellow “sucriers” are met with, or that the amusing, glossy brown “trembleurs” are seen bowing and scraping to one another in their usual polite fashion, but in some other islands these birds are very common. The “Wild Birds’ Protection Ordinance,” which was passed in 1875, has hardly had time to bear fruit as yet, but before long the feathered tribe may once again abound. Especially rare is that most beautiful of all humming-birds, the “Tufted Coquette,”—Lophornis ornatus—and once the species was as numerous as the “Ruby-crested,”[23] the “Savanna Sapphire,”[24] and the “Snowy-throated Emeralds,”[25] which are still abundant in Trinidad. Some lovely specimens of the above-named were offered me for sale, and I doubt whether I could have refused them, even without the assurance that they all came from the “Main.” I must have made a mistake in thinking that the “Snowy-throated Emerald” was peculiar to Trinidad!

From Port of Spain there are many delightful excursions to be made. There is the Blue Basin, at the head of the Diegomartin Valley, and above it is the Signal Station, from whence the land and coast views are very beautiful. Then there is the celebrated Maracas waterfall, the road to which affords an opportunity of seeing the most picturesque plain, forest, and river scenery in the island. Besides the mud volcanoes, there is also that natural phenomenon, the Pitch Lake of La Brea. A weird, uncanny, intensely hot locality is that in which this strange lagoon is situated. The lake itself, which is nearly three miles in circumference, is surrounded by wood and jungle, growing luxuriantly from the pitchy soil. Out of the black sea rise little green oases covered with flowering shrubs, and occasionally lines of grass streak the surface. In the asphalte, which is hard in some places and soft and sticky in others, are numerous cracks and channels, often filled with clear brown water. Here and there a massive tree trunk or tapering pole protrudes through the pitch, like the hull and masts of some wrecked vessel sinking gradually out of sight.

Charles Kingsley has already fully described the sights and wonders of Trinidad, and since “At Last” was written the face of the country has little altered. Civilization of late has progressed, a railroad and coast steamers now connect different parts of the island, plantations have increased in number, and trade is augmenting annually. But Trinidad is still in its infancy, as by far the greater part of the island is still unreclaimed and unopened forest.