^' TRIGONOCEPHALUS LANCEOLATUS." 61 



islands? Various are the reports accounting for their 

 origin. Some assert that the aboriginal Caribs introduced 

 them from the mainland of South America, to drive out the 

 white usurper of their country. But Venezuela is 800 miles 

 distant, a long journey to take snakes in such frail barks 

 as the Caribs use. Again, some think they came on drift- 

 wood from Gruiana ; but the strong current of the Orinoco 

 would have washed them hundreds of miles eastward of St. 

 Lucia into the centre of the Atlantic ; and if this view were 

 correct, why are they not to be found in Barbadoes, which 

 lies almost in the current of the Orinoco ? Again, some 

 think that the French introduced them during their war- 

 like relations with the English at the latter end of the last 

 centmy, when these very islands were the scenes of so 

 much bloodshed and strife, both nations alike coveting St, 

 Lucia and Martinique, not only on account of their unsur- 

 passed beauty and great wealth, with their forests of the 

 finest wood for ship building and their mines of sulphur 

 and alum, but coveted still more for their magnificent har- 

 bours and anchorage and almost impregnable fortresses. 



I rather incline myself to the opinion that they are indi- 

 genous to these islands, and were so named by the French, 

 who first discovered and described them. In whatever way 

 they arrived originally, they are but too common now, and 

 are perhaps most frequently found in the neighbourhood of 

 the Pitons or Sugar-loaf Mountains. 



These are two huge obelisks of granite rock, the one about 

 two miles, the other about four miles in circumference at 

 the base, and towering from the edge of the sea to a height 

 of nearly 4,000 feet above its level. One of these Pitons is 

 fairly accessible, the other has only been ascended by one 

 man. There is an old story that a British crew once set 

 out for the top of the smaller Piton, but were all killed by 



