With nature smiling thus around him, with the silence which brings not gloom surrounding him, with the balmy breeze rising fresh and sweet from the bosom of the waters, fanning him into contemplation, the hardest-natured man must feel if only for a moment, the chastening quietude, which only nature, and he who is mirrored in nature, can impart and bestow.
The bosom in which the snakes of envy or hatred have long nestled and brooded, may feel itself relieved of half its oppression and suffering whilst gazing at nature’s beautiful works, as manifested among the islands of the tropics, and beholding in its embodiment of splendour the omnipotence of the Creator. How many a heart whose life-blood has been frozen under the influence of ingratitude, cruelty, revenge, and pride, or, perhaps, of the sad consciousness of a country’s thankfulness—a country in whose cause youth, energy, wealth, and talents—may all have been spent, has not been soothed into mild quiescence by scenes like these?
There are countries around which the works of man have thrown a veil of enchantment; there are climes that are sacred, because some Heaven-born poet sang there; there are spots about which the memory of mankind has clung, and will for ever cling: such countries and such places are made famous, great and enchanting by man alone. Their beauties sprang from his hand. The idea which plants on them the ever-enduring standard of veneration arose from his valour, his heroism, or perhaps his benevolence, but whatever charm or interest the tropics possess they derive from nature, and from nature only.
For three days together, the ship continued her course, amidst the horse-shoe formed islands of the West-Indian Archipelago, which, at a distance at sea, appear merely like heavy clouds where nothing is real, nothing is animated, resting on the surface of the waters.
On the morning of the fourth, the towering mountain-peaks of Trinidad which inspired in the devout Columbus, the name which the island now bears, appeared in sight.
Gradually the bold and rocky coast which girds the island on the north, grew more and more distinct and as the day waned, the ship entered the channel that separates the small island of Tobago from Trinidad, and bears the name of the latter.
The old commander, with necessary caution, ordered the greater part of the sails to be taken in; the vessel moved along slowly, and was borne down principally by the strength of the current.
The commander stood on the quarter-deck admiring the romantic scenery which presented itself on the left to his view. There the overhanging rocks rose perpendicularly from the heaving ocean, whose long lasting and lashing billows broke on their rugged base, and shrouded them in one constant sheet of white bubbling foam, and as they towered and seemed to lose themselves in the clouds, they bore on their hoary heads forests of gigantic trees, whose many colored blossoms appeared far out at sea; while down their furrowed sides torrents of the purest water fell foaming in angry precipitance. Here some cave hollowed by no hand of man—the home of the untiring pelicans that ply the wing the live-long day, would send forth its hollow murmurs, as it regurgitated some heaving rolling wave that had intrusively swept into its inmost recess. There some rock from whose side time had torn away its fellows, stood naked and bare, sullen in its solitude, and resisting the powerless waves that dashed themselves into a thousand far-flying sprays upon its jagged front; and here again some secluded creek, eaten deeply into the heart of the frowning highlands, in which the waters lay smooth and quiet, like tired soldiers after the toil and strife of battle.