A VISIT TO THE WORLD OUTSIDE. 201 



looking toward the' sea, wliere a small stream crawls 

 lazily over the sands, and the beach crooks like a 

 scimitar around to Crown Point, some five miles 

 away, smooth and hard, at low water, lined with 

 cocoa palms and sea grapes. At its southern ex- 

 tremity, where the island ends in a coral reef, at the 

 time of my observation, sat, bolt upright, the hull of 

 a stranded schooner. 



Accepting an invitation of the surveyor-general 

 of Tobago, who sent me a horse, I galloped out to the 

 Point one morning over the smooth, hard beach. The 

 singing of the birds in the sea-grape thickets and the 

 fragrance of the flowers there intertangled and car- 

 peting the fields, made this canter one of the memo- 

 rable outings of my life. Suddenly darting away from 

 the smooth racecourse on the beach, my steed bore me 

 through a hedge-lined lane, where his mufiled hoof- 

 beats caused the birds to scatter in every direction, 

 leaving in the air fragmentary gushes of song as de- 

 lightful as the melody of our own song sparrow in 

 the IS^orth in the opening hours of an April morning. 

 The lane lost itself, finally, becoming merged in a 

 number of other tracks, and then the estate of " Golden 

 Grove " lay before me, a level tract of several hun- 

 dred acres, smooth as a fioor and treeless, save for a 

 few gigantic tamarinds and mangos and a littoral 

 fringe of cocoa palms where it bordered on the beacji^ 



In the center of this verdant plain stood a fine 

 large mansion, in the best style of old West -Indian 

 architecture, with broad verandas spread out invit- 

 ingly on every side. Here I was met by the proprie- 

 15 



