for him to aspire. Legally and civilly he has all the rights and privileges of the white, but there is a wall of prejudice that he cannot climb over or break through.

When in Bermuda I enjoyed for a few days the companionship of a most amiable and scholarly clergyman of the Anglican Church, who was here to look into the administration of a school for the higher education of the negro. Forty years before our meeting his father was rector of Pembroke, Bermuda, and with funds collected in Great Britain established this school. "What good do you hope to achieve,” I asked, "by carrying the black beyond a rudimentary training?"

"You surprise me," he answered. "he answered. "Would you keep him in the illiteracy and ignorance of his slavery days; is he not worthy of as good an education as the white man?"

"Indeed he is," was my reply, "if you continue to deal with him as the whites deal with each other. But you do not; you close every avenue that leads to prosperity and success against him. With the exception of a coloured merchant in this city of Hamilton, who was trained in London, there is not on these islands a solitary negro holding any position in society, in civil or political life, in the executive or legislative council, or in any position that a white man would aspire to. In Bermuda there are ten blacks to one white, but you have raised the franchise so high that not one negro in eight has a vote. By higher education you lift him above his fellows,

whom he despises. He cannot enter your society, and there he is, dissatisfied, discontented, and miserable, neither 'fish nor flesh, nor good red herring.''

CHAPTER VII

LA BREATHE LAKE OF PITCH

A gulph profound as that Serbonian bog,
Betwixt Damatia and Cassius old,
Where armies whole have sunk.

-Milton.

TRINIDAD is the most southerly of the West Indian Islands and absolutely the hottest place I was ever in. It lies across the delta of the Orinoco River and is separated from South America by the Gulf of Paria. From the Caribbean Sea we entered the Dragon's Mouth and at daylight steamed into the harbour of Port of Spain, the capital of the island. The city claims a population of sixty thousand, and is saved from pestilence by torrential storms of rain and colonies of vultures, or Johnnycrows, which are protected by law, and dispute with mongrel curs the offal of the back-yards and streets. It was 94° where I sat on the balcony of the hotel, called, by way of mockery, I suppose, the Ice House. My object in coming to Trinidad was to see the famous Lake of Pitch and I joined a group of Venezuelan rebel officers who were leaving for the lake the morning after my arrival.

The lake is thirty-six miles from this city, near to San Fernando, a prosperous town of seven thousand souls. As our party arranged to go overland, we instructed our negro driver to wait for us on the

mountain road, and we began the ascent of the volcanic hill on foot.

Our path carried us through a wilderness of tropical vegetation, a riotous outpouring of primeval nature. Tall cane-like manacque palms, forest nymphs, the russet and golden-hued melostromes, and the round-headed mango trees bowered the foot-hills. Higher up, the face of the mountain was robed in exquisite ferns, delicate creepers and vines clinging in festoons to trunks and branches of giant sequiæ, whose bark is an excellent tonic and febrifuge, and a good substitute for quinine. On our right and left stretched away to illimitable distances forests of mahogany, rosewood, lignum vitæ, satinwood, and logwood. Higher up is the pimento, which yields us the aromatic allspice, the palma christi, the parent of our castor oil, and the trumpet tree, from the wood of which the negro carves his flute.

The ascent of the mountain taxed our endurance severely. "An angle of forty-five degrees" is an expression commonly used in conversation to indicate any sort of an incline somewhat out of level. As a matter of fact a slope of ten or fifteen degrees is anything but easy. We carried a clinometer, and its markings recorded slopes of fifteen and fortytwo degrees. At last we gained the mountain road from which the view was entrancing. Between us and the sea lay the alluvial plain or “intervals," as they say in New Brunswick, deposited by a spur of the Orinoco, and by other rivers which flow into the

Gulf of Paria. Fringing the shore mile upon mile stretched the cocoanut palms, and the mangrove swamps. Ships of many nations lay at anchor in the bay, taking in and discharging cargoes.

Trinidad is only twenty-six miles from Venezuela, and as the republic was painfully slow in meeting the interest on its European bonds, Europe, or a part of Europe, came in person to collect, accompanied by gunboats, battleships, and cruisers. Six of the warships were now riding at anchor in the bay, which was in constant agitation, caused by the steam launches, naphtha dories and mouches-au-feu carrying cablegrams, messages and dispatches to and from Port of Spain. To our left, between Paria and Trinidad, an outward bound sailing ship was passing through the "Jaws of the Dragon," while a little to our right the "Serpent's Mouth," was open between the Orinoco and the island to admit the Dahome, of the Pickford and Black line, to Port of Spain.

On our road to San Fernando, we passed through groves of bread-fruit-trees, oranges, mangoes and papaws. The road was hedged with varieties of the hibiscus, blazing with crimson, pink and fawn colours. Tropical nature is ever bountiful and generous to prodigality, and let a man be what he will he cannot withhold his admiration of the wonderful creations of God that are here all around him in luxuriant profusion.

As we drew near to San Fernando, the plantain and banana plantations added to the wealth and