Six months in the West-Indies, in 1825

63 TRINIDAD. majesty. I hope that noble ornament of the place will never be cut down; it is but one, and let it remain amidst the softer cultivation around it, to show hereafter what harvests the earth once bore upon its bosom there. At about twenty feet from the ground the trunk of the silk-cotton tree diverges into buttresses of great prominence and size, so that if a covering were thrown over them, a very tolerable set of barracks might be organized for one man each round the enormous stem.

I love to recollect the days which I spent in Trinidad, and would fain record some of their events whilst the impressions which they made are still fresh upon my mind. Gentle reader, whilst thou pokest thy coal fire, and cleavest to the grate as if Satan were at thy back, think, O ! think of the mercury at 94째 of Fahrenheit!

On a morning of such a temper, the elixir cup of coffee being first duly quaffed, we, that is to say, the governor, the bishop, his lordship's two chaplains, your poor bookmaker and an honest man, Sainthill by name, started in landau and four, and in gig and one, for La Pastora, the residence of Antonio Gomez. And first we stopped at the governor's grog shop, the trivial name of a crystal spring which has been taught to gush forth from a rock on the way-side into a neat stone basin, whereat under the shade of a spreading evergreen the dark ladies of the country rejoice to lave their dusty