20 



TRINIDAD : THEN AND NOW 



Cabot, are in boldness, success and results second only 

 to those of Columbus, and yet although Sebastian 

 succeeded in giving a new continent to England, no 

 one knows his burial place. Such is fame ! 



This in brief is an account of the different occa- 

 sions and some of the various people who discovered 

 America before Columbus, as taken from the 22nd 

 Vol. of " The Historian's History of the World " 

 (pages 401-454.) It is very interesting reading to any- 

 one who will take the trouble to read it. I have a 

 special object in mentioning it, and that is to try, if 

 possible, to give an origin to the fair people whom 

 Columbus found inhabiting the West Indian islands, 

 including Trinidad, they being so different in every 

 respect from the natives found on the Mainland. My 

 theory, and, perhaps, it is not original, is that these 

 people were descended from the original Irish, Scan- 

 dinavian, Scotch and Welsh settlers whose disco- 

 veries I have briefly set out ; and the following 

 passages which I quote in full will, I think, bear out 

 this suggestion. 



66 The Jesuit missionaries inform us that on 

 their visits to these people they found the cross, 

 a knowledge of the stars, a superior kind of wor- 

 ship, a more ingenious mind among the inhabi- 

 tants of the coast which is thought to have been 

 colonized from Greenland. They even assure us that 

 many Norwegian words are to be found in the dialect 

 of the people. The causes which led to the destruc- 

 tion of the settlers were probably similar to those 

 which produced the same effect in Greenland." 



