4 TRINIDAD. 



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 sea-ports ; and the Gulf of Paria, 

 between Trinidad and the province of Cumana, 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 import- 

 ance ; 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 r Domingo then ranked as a queen amongst 

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

 sperity and depression, these islands have at length approached a 

 most eventful crisis, and those among 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 by-gone epoch, rich, and 

 flourishing ; but they were then cursed with the loathsome lepra 

 of slavery ; they are now free, but many of them fast sinking into 

 the abyss of misery. By contrasting their present, with their 

 former social condition, the philanthropist has reason to rejoice ; 

 ttat, 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 

 it both a profitable and incumbent duty to institute a diligent 

 and persevering inquiry into the various causes which have induced 

 such results, and into the best means for remedying the same, and 

 improving the condition of the emancipated colonies. For, these 

 colonies are, by the progression of modern navigation, brought 

 nearer to Europe than they ever were, whilst contiguous to them, 



