TRINIDAD I THEN AND NOW. 



35 



reduce them to slavery, his followers drifted away 

 to the mainland, and his scheme came to nothing." 



" Sometime between 1577-1584 the settlement of 

 St. Joseph was founded. This town is said to have 

 been called after a Spaniard named Don Josef de 

 Oruna, (while there are others who say it was called 

 after Joseph, the husband of the Virgin Mary). 

 St. Joseph is six miles from the coast and is backed 

 by a high range of hills to the North. East, West and 

 South, it commands a splendid view of the surround- 

 ing country* and was evidently selected by the few 

 colonists, conscious of their weakness, as a site out of 

 the way of free-booters and buccaneers, then so nu- 

 merous in West Indian seas. Their outlet to the sea 

 was where the present capital, Port-of-Spain, now 

 stands. ' ' 



Sir Walter Raleigh, somewhere towards the 

 end of March, 1595, called at Trinidad on his 

 way to explore the banks of the Orinoco and to 

 search for the fabled riches of Guiana. Sailing in 

 through the Boca Grande, right across the Gulf of 

 Paria, he came to the point where La Brea now 

 stands, and is said to have caulked his ships 

 with the pitch which he found there in abundance. 

 From thence he sailed northwards and anchored off 

 the Caroni river, which he entered with his boats, and 

 sailed up to the place where the St. Joseph river 

 enters itself into the Caroni — in those days a con- 

 siderable river. There he found a mud fort occupied 

 by a small garrison of about twenty soldiers ; these 

 * See Casual Wanderings No. 2. 



