HOW TO BUILD. 33 



good taste had left rftill unpapered. AVindowless bay win- 

 dows, like great port-holes, opened from each of them into 

 a gallery which ran round the house, sheltered by broad 

 sloping eaves. The deep shade of the eaves contrasted bril- 

 liantly with the bright light outside : and contrasted too with 

 the wooden pillars wdiich held up the roof, and which 

 seemed on their southern sides white-hot in the blazing 

 sunshine. 



AVliat a field was there for native art ; for richest orna- 

 mentation of these pillars and those beams. Surely Trinidad, 

 and the whole of northern South America, ought to become 

 some day the paradise of wood-carvers, who, copying even a 

 few of the numbeiiess vegetable and animal forms around, 

 .may far surpass the old wood-carving schools of Burmah and 

 Hindostan. And I sat dreaming of the lianes which might 

 be made to wreathe the pillars; the flowers, fruits, birds, 

 butterflies, monkeys, kinkajous, and what not, which might 

 cluster about the capitals, or swing along the beams. 

 Let men who have such materials, and such models, proscribe 

 all tawdry and poor European art most of it a bad imitation 

 of bad Greek, or worse Eenaissance and trust to Nature and 

 the facts which lie nearest them. But when will a time come 

 lor the West Indies when there Avill be wealth and civiliza- 

 tion enough to make such an art possible ? Soon, if all 

 tlie employers of labour were like tlie gentleman at whose 



VOJ.. II. D 



