Trinidad is the largest, after Jamaica, of the British West Indian Islands, and the hottest absolutely after none of them. It is square-shaped, and, I suppose, was once a part of South America. The Orinoco River and the ocean-currents between them have cut a channel between it and the mainland, which has expanded into a vast shallow lake known as the Gulf of Paria. The two entrances by which the gulf is approached are narrow, and are called bocas, or mouths,—one the Dragon’s Mouth, the other the Serpent’s. When the Orinoco is in flood the water is brackish, and the brilliant violet hue of the Caribbean Sea is changed to a dirty yellow; but the harbor which is so formed would hold all the commercial navies of the world, and seems formed by nature to be the depot one day of an enormous trade.
[Landing was made at Port of Spain, the capital, so called when Trinidad was a Spanish possession, and Mr. Froude found pleasant quarters in the house of a friend.]
The town has between thirty and forty thousand people living in it, and the rain and the Johnny crows A WATERFALL IN THE TROPICS The borders were blazing with varieties of the single hibiscus, crimson, pink, and fawn-color, the largest that I had ever seen. The average diameter of each single flower was from seven to eight inches. Wind streamed freely through the long sitting-room, loaded with the perfume of orange-trees; on table and in bookcase the hand and mind visible of a gifted and cultivated man. The particular room assigned to myself would have been delightful, but that my possession of it was disputed, even in daylight, by mosquitoes, who for blood-thirsty ferocity had a bad pre-eminence over the worst that I had ever met with elsewhere. I killed one who was at work upon me, and examined him through a glass. Bewick, with the inspiration of genius, had drawn his exact likeness as the devil,—a long black stroke for a body, a nick for a neck, horns on the head, and a beak for a mouth, spindle arms, and longer spindle legs, two pointed wings, and a tail. Line for line, there the figure was before me, which in the unforgetable tail-piece is driving the thief under the gallows, and I had a melancholy satisfaction in identifying him. I had been warned to be on the lookout for scorpions, centipedes, jiggers, and land-crabs, who would bite me if I walked slipperless over the floor in the dark. Of these I met with none, either there or anywhere, but the mosquito of Trinidad is enough by himself. For malice, mockery, and venom of tooth and trumpet he is without a match in the world. From mosquitoes, however, one could seek safety in tobacco-smoke, or hide behind the lace curtains with which every bed is provided. Otherwise I found every provision to make life pass deliciously. To walk is difficult in a damp, steamy atmosphere, hotter during daylight than the hottest forcing-house in Kew.... Beautiful, however, it was beyond dispute. Before sunset a carriage took us around the savanna. Tropical human beings, like tropical birds, are fond of fine colors, especially black human beings, and the park was as brilliant as Kensington Gardens on a Sunday. At nightfall the scene became even more wonderful, air, grass, and trees being alight with fireflies, each as brilliant as an English glow-worm. The palm-tree at our own gate stood like a ghostly sentinel clear against the starry sky, a single long dead frond hanging from below the coronet of leaves and clashing against the stem as it was blown to and fro by the night-wind, while long-winged bats swept and whistled over our heads. [The governor’s residence and the botanical gardens next call for attention.]