THIN ID AD : THEN AND NOW. 



75 



sometimes good to let one either turn over the stores 

 of his memory or make a search for the source from 

 which the quotations are made. 



" No man was better pleased than Chacon, 

 — when Spain was no longer able to keep possession 

 of Trinidad that it should pass into the hands of the 

 English, a nation who would govern it with justice 

 and equity. And so his prediction and hopes were 

 fulfilled. It speaks well for the mildness and justice 

 of British rule that, in three generations — at the most 

 — such a community as we now possess should have 

 been able to form itself out of material so discordant. 

 That British rule has been a blessing to Trinidad all 

 honest folk know well. ' ' 



Then in another passage speaking personally of 

 the latter days of Chacon he says : — 



tA Thus ended — as earth's best men have often 

 ended — the good Don Jose Maria Chacon. His only 

 monument is one after all, aere perinus ; namely 

 that most beautiful flowering shrub which bears his 

 name ; Warsewiozia, some call it ; others, Calycophyl- 

 lum ; but the botanists of the island continue loyally 

 the name Chaconia, to whose blazing crimson spikes, 

 which every Christmas-tide r^enew throughout the 

 wild forests, of which he would have made a civilized 

 garden, the memory of the last and best of the 

 Spanish Governors. 9 9 



