4 TRINIDAD. 



productions, such as sugar, coffee, cotton, indigo, cacao, spices, 

 rice, and the best tobacco in the world. They can also produce, 

 for the support of their own population, an abundance of ali- 

 mentary substances, particularly plantains, corn, rice, cassada, 

 and other farinaceous roots, with all sorts of vegetables and fruits; 

 also poultry, hogs, and oxen. Some of them abound in beautiful 

 cabinet-woods, and the most durable timber. Their numerous 

 harbours and ports are capable of accommodating vast fleets of 

 merchantmen, and of affording anchorage to the united navies of 

 the entire world. Cuba, alone, possesses, besides many bays and 

 havens, at least a dozen first-class seaports ; and the Gulf of Paria, 

 between Trinidad and the province of Cum ana, in Venezuela, 

 may be regarded as a truly magnificent harbour, closely and 

 securely sheltered from all winds and weathers. In no part of 

 the world is navigation more easy and safe than in the Caribbean 

 Sea; it is, however, visited, at intervals, by hurricanes, which 

 spread ruin and devastation wherever they are felt. The Antilles 

 are also subject to earthquakes, of which sad records are written 

 in the annals of some of the islands. The climate is generally 

 unhealthy on the seaboard, remittent and intermittent fevers 

 being prevalent ; dysentery and yellow fever may also be said to 

 be endemic. 



The proximity of the Western isles to Europe, the great capa- 

 bilities of their soil for producing the tropical staples and other 

 articles of commerce, formerly rendered them of great impor- 

 tance; and, for many years, their possession was warmly disputed 

 by the European powers. For a long period they enjoyed the 

 privilege of supplying Europe with colonial products, and the 

 French colony of St. Domingo then ranked as a queen amongst 

 her sister isles : but after passing through alternations of pros- 

 perity and depression, these islands have at length approached a 

 most eventful crisis, and those amongst them that still retain some- 

 thing of their pristine eminence — it grieves me to say — are those 

 which have not abjured the wholesale abominations of slavery. 

 The time, however, has arrived when they, too, must yield and 

 submit to the fiat of public opinion. 



These islands were, therefore, at a bygone epoch, rich and 

 flourishing ; but they were then cursed with the loathsome lepra 

 of slavery; nearly all are now free, but many of them fast 

 verging on ruin. By contrasting their present with their 

 former social condition, the philanthropist has reason to rejoice ; 

 but, on the other hand, the comparison of their actual state of 

 industrial depression with their past prosperity, cannot but be a 

 subject of anxious reflection to the statesman and philosopher. 

 It behoves these parties, therefore — whether as leaders in the 

 senate, or as deep searchers into the nature of things — to consider 



