166 TRINIDAD : THEN AND NOW. 



various bands, who made them their " happy hunt- 

 ting ground," ready material for attacking them 

 when they, as a Borough Councillor put it to an over 

 credulous Governor the day after the " Cannes 

 Brule " riot of 1881, " brutally interfered with 

 the people's innocent amusements." Such incidents 

 in the history of Trinidad have happily passed 

 away — never I hope, to occur again. The influ- 

 ential and educated people who were at the back of 

 the ignorant demagogues who were responsible for it 

 have also passed away, let us be charitable and hope 

 to a better place " where the wicked cease from 

 troubling." Nevertheless I could not refer to the 

 Trinidad of Then without going more fully into the 

 history of that celebrated Carnival, which I will do 

 in another chapter. 



It would Now be difficult for the rabble, even did 

 it exist to the same extent as Then, to collect stones 

 for the amusement of stoning each other and the 

 police ; the streets are not only well laid out but in 

 many of the important, I may say all the important, 

 streets the material now used in their construction 

 would render it even difficult to dig them up, and a 

 stray stone is a rarity. 



What became of a large portion of the house 

 rates collected for the upkeep of the Port-of-Spain 

 streets and other purposes in my early days, was then 

 a question often asked and never answered. Was it 

 that the favoured few escaped having their rates col- 

 lected ? or was there another cause ? I am unable to 

 say ; both were not only hinted at but sometimes 



