68 SOUTH AMERICA— THE ANDES EEOIONS. 



to turn these animals over to obtain an abundance of food. But here as elsewhere 

 turtles have become rare, and the struggle for existence has grown as intense as 

 in most other places. 



There are no longer any full-blood aborigines, who, according to Lavaysse, 

 had been reduced in 1803 to three families, comprising altogether 26 souls. 

 At present the great bulk of the population consists of blacks and people of colour, 

 settled in the villages and on the plantations, which form a vast belt of gardens 

 round the whole island. In 1871 the white population numbered only 120 persons. 

 Scarborough, the capital, lies on an inlet of the south-west coast facing south- 

 wards. Although a mere hamlet, it is the centre of an export trade which in 

 1891 exceeded £21,000, and which before the fall of prices in the sugar market 

 averaged £80,000 a year. 



III. — Trinidad. 



The Yere of the natives, re-narned Trinidad by Columbus in 1498, in honour 

 of the " three Persons united in one God," is one of the largest islands washed 

 by the Caribbean waters, ranking in size next to Puerto Rico, whose almost geo- 

 metrical outlines it faintly reproduces. Like Puerto Rico it has the form of a 

 rectangle, which is compared by the Spaniards to an " oxhide " from the two 

 peninsular appendices prolonging the north and south coasts in the direction of the 

 mainland. 



Physical Features. 



From the geological point of view Trinidad is a fragment of the Venezuelan 

 region. The rim of rounded crests skirting its north side is continued on the 

 continent by the Paria range, which in its turn reappears beyond the Cumana 

 Gulf in the elevated chain separating the Caribbean Sea from the elevated plains 

 of Caracas and Valencia. In the island and on the mainland the formations are 

 everywhere the same, plutonic and metaraorphic masses of a highly compact argil- 

 laceous schist, whose steeper escarpments face seawards. Despite the two breaks 

 in the chain, at the Dragon's Mouth and the Gulf of Cumana, the axis of the 

 system maintains its regular trend from Galera Point to Puerto Cabello, a total 

 distance of about 500 miles, inclining but slightly from a line parallel with the 

 equator. Beginning at the easternmost point of Trinidad under 10° 50' 15" 

 north latitude, the coast range crosses the lOlh degree at the point where it is 

 deflected south-westwards to merge in the general system of the Andes proper. 



The break which occurs in the coast range between the Gulf of Paria and 

 the Caribbean Sea is, moreover, studded with islands and islets representing the 

 crests of submerged hills, which form a continuation of the north-west headland of 

 Trinidad. The opening between the gulf and the open sea is thus decomposed 

 into several channels, such as the Boca de los Monos, the Boca de los Huevos, the 

 Boca de Navios and the Boca Grande. In this inlet, which represents the com- 

 bined erosive action of the marine and Orinoco currents, the greatest depth in the 

 main channel is about 150, and in the smaller passages 100 fathoms, while the 



