72 SEA FISH OF TRINIDAD 
tress, firing six cents rum, or love passages with his “ma com- 
mére’’), I strolled about Cunape village, as Sangre Grande 
is locally called, to see what changes had occurred in four 
years. My impressions were that business had increased, 
judging from the number of fresh “shacks” that had been 
run up and the congested confusion of carts, barrels and 
boxes, etc., but the proportion of loafers, that is, five to 
every one working-man or woman, was unaltered. Every 
provision shop, and their name was legion, held loafers of all 
sorts who did nothing (as far as I could see), but sit round on 
barrels orlean up against the counters and doors gossiping and 
living seemingly on the combined smells of the shop, which 
were undeniably strong, and afforded probably all the nour- 
ishment these idle ones needed. Outside one of these tem- 
ples, I saw a man, very drunk indeed, and it was yet early in 
the day, and finding his face familiar to me as that of an old 
wood-squarer, I asked Harris, to whom he had spoken a few 
maudlin words, if he were not in that line of business. Harris 
answered that he was a detective, which left me furiously to 
think over the Machiavellian methods of the Trinidad Police 
Force. The messages having been made we got under way, 
the faithful Harris acting as Jehu. 
Wheeling to the right, before the Court-House, passing 
the Cunape River over the Brooklyn Bridge, we gallantly 
breasted the hill leading to the official portion of Sangre 
Grande. Here, near the Catholic Church I was struck by 
one of the first emblems of progress, a large unfinished build- 
ing which looked as if the designer had intended primarily to 
erect a replica of the “Taj Mahal’, but, having changed his 
mind, had chopped it up into little cubicles like a Chinese 
gambling house. Harris, who I found was brimful of 
information, told me that the building had been designed 
and erected by an Indian fellow citizen, a remote descendant 
of “the Lion of the Punjaub,”’ at least his name had the same 
terminative Singh, who had amassed unto himself many 
shekels and was determined to show “dem half-bit buccra”’ 
of Trinidad how to build a house. Up past the houses of the 
official dignitaries, D. M. O., Warden, etc., over the Sangre 
Grande River, and again up the hill where the flourishing 
