Category: Travel Writing
At last we, too, were crossing the Atlantic. At last the dream of forty years, please God, would be fulfilled, and I should see (and happily, not alone) the West Indies and the Spanish Main. From childhood I had studied their Natural History, their charts, their Romances, and...
At last we, too, were crossing the Atlantic. At last the dream of forty years, please God, would be fulfilled, and I should see (and happily, not alone) the West Indies and the...
2. Chapter 2I had heard and read much, from boyhood, about these 'Lesser Antilles.' I had pictured them to myself a thousand times: but I was altogether unprepared for their beauty and gran...
3. Chapter 3It may be worth while to spend a few pages in telling something of the history of this lovely island since the 31st of July 1499, when Columbus, on his third voyage, sighted the...
4. Chapter 4The first thing notable, on landing in Port of Spain at the low quay which has been just reclaimed from the mud of the gulf, is the multitude of people who are doing nothing. It...
5. Chapter 5My Dear-----, We are actually settled in a West Indian country- house, amid a multitude of sights and sounds so utterly new and strange, that the mind is stupefied by the contin...
6. Chapter 6Early in January, I started with my host and his little suite on an expedition to the islands of the Bocas. Our object was twofold: to see tropical coast scenery, and to get, if...
7. Chapter 7I have seen them at last. I have been at last in the High Woods, as the primeval forest is called here; and they are not less, but more, wonderful than I had imagined them. But...
8. Chapter 8We were, of course, desirous to visit that famous Lake of Pitch, which our old nursery literature described as one of the 'Wonders of the World.' It is not that; it is merely a...
9. Chapter 9The road to the ancient capital of the island is pleasant enough, and characteristic of the West Indies. Not, indeed, as to its breadth, make, and material, for they, contrary t...
10. Chapter 10I had a few days of pleasant wandering in the centre of the island, about the districts which bear the names of Naparima and Montserrat; a country of such extraordinary fertilit...
11. Chapter 11I had heard and read much of the beauty of mountain scenery in the Tropics. What I had heard and read is not exaggerated. I saw, it is true, in this little island no Andes, with...
12. Chapter 12The last of my pleasant rides, and one which would have been perhaps the pleasantest of all, had I had (as on other occasions) the company of my host, was to the Cocal, or Coco-...
13. Chapter 13with two horses, two mules, and a Negro and a Coolie carrying our scanty luggage in Arima baskets: but not without an expression of pity from the Negro who cleaned my boots. 'Wh...
14. Chapter 14When I arrived in Trinidad, the little island was somewhat excited about changes in the system of education, which ended in a compromise like that at home, though starting from...
15. Chapter 15Dear ---, I have been to the races: not to bet, nor to see the horses run: not even to see the fair ladies on the Grand Stand, in all the newest fashions of Paris via New York:...
16. Chapter 16The 'provision grounds' of the Negroes were very interesting. I had longed to behold, alive and growing, fruits and plants which I had heard so often named, and seen so often fi...
17. Chapter 17At last we were homeward bound. We had been seven weeks in the island. We had promised to be back in England, if possible, within the three months; and we had a certain pride in...