SAX JOSEF. 5 



The manager rides up, probably under an umbrella, as you 

 are, and a pleasant and instructive cliat follows, wound up, 

 usually, if the house be not far off, by an invitation to come 

 in and Inive a li^ht drink ; an invitation which, considering 

 the state of the thermometer, you will be tempted to accept, 

 especially as you know that the claret and water will be 

 excellent. And so you daw^dle on, looking at this and that 

 new and odd si^ht, but most of all feastincr your eves on the 

 beauty of the northern mountains, till you reach the gentle 

 rise on which stands, eight miles from Port of Spain, the little 

 city of San Josef AVe should call it, here in England, a 

 village : still, it is not every village in England which has 

 fought the Dutch, and earned its right to be called a city, by 

 beatino- some of the bravest sailors of the seventeenth 

 centur}'. True, there is not a single shop in it with plate- 

 Q[lass windows : but what matters that, if its citizens have all 

 that civilized people need, and more, and will heap what 

 they have on the stranger so hospitably that they almost pain 

 him by the trouble wdiich they take ? True, no carriages and 

 pairs, w^ith powdered footmen, roll about the streets ; and the 

 most splendid vehicles you are likely to meet are American 

 buggies four-wheeled gigs with heads, and aprons through 

 which the reins can be passed in wet weather. But what 

 matters that, as long as the buggies keep out sun and i-aiii 

 effectually, and as lung as those who sit in them be rc.il 



