MAN THE DESTROYER. 173 



So iiiucli it ought to do ; and so much it can and will do 

 in Trinidad, which happily for it possesses a Government 

 which governs, instead of leaving every man, as in the 

 Irishman's paradise, to " do what is right in the sight of his 

 own eyes, and what is wrong too, av he likes." Without 

 such wise regulation, and even restraint, of the ignorant 

 greediness of human toil, intent only (as in the too exclusive 

 cultivation of the sugar-cane and of the cotton-plant) on 

 present profits, without foresight or care for the future, 

 the lands of warmer climates will surely fall under that 

 curse, so well described by the venerable Elias Fries, of 

 Lund.^ 



" A broad belt of waste land follows gradually in the steps 

 of cultivation. If it expands, its centre and its cradle dies, 

 and on the outer borders only do we find green shoots. 

 But it is not impossible, only diftlcult, for man, without 

 renouncing the advantage of culture itself, one day to make 

 reparation for the injury which he has inflicted; he is the 

 appointed lord of creation. Tiue it is that thorns and thistles, 

 ill-favoured and poisonous plants, well named by botanists 

 ' rubbish-plants,' mark the track which man has proudly 

 traversed through the earth. Before him lay original Nature 

 in her wild but sublime beauty. Behind him he leaves the 

 desert, a deformed and ruined land ; for childish desire of 



^ Sclileiden's " Plaut : a Biography." Eud of Lecture xi. 



