TRINIDAD: THEN AND NOW. 



241 



beginning to look doleful. I may here state that 

 the banana and fruit industry was never started on a 

 sufficient scale to even entitle it to be called a minor 

 industry. That is now, however, beside the question, 

 for although this service was introduced with one ob- 

 ject it was soon seized on to profit another, and that 

 it has done so is beyond doubt. 



The first contract and subsidy paid for it 

 was given to the Trinidad Shipping and Trading 

 Company who retained it for two terms of five years 

 each. It is now held by the Royal Mail Company. I 

 have been intimate with it since the first trip, and so 

 continued for many years, making as many as six 

 journeys each year and sometimes more, and although 

 I had to go through some hard work landing in all 

 seasons and at all times of the day or night as cir- 

 cumstances required, I always so much enjoyed dt 

 that I strongly recommend it to others ; if the party 

 consists of half a dozen so much the more enjoyable 

 it becomes. 



It now becomes necessary to describe it. We 

 leave on a Monday or Tuesday moonlight night and 

 go south. If the night is fine some of us can remain 

 on deck sleeping in deck chairs. We pass through 

 the Serpent's Mouth between five and sdx o'clock in 

 the morning and see the low lying coast of Venezuela 

 and the several delta of the Orinoco in the hazy dis- 

 tance ; we run along the coast line of Icacos, — where 

 Columbus is said to have landed and interviewed 

 " the fair race of natives V which he first saw after 

 his discovery of Trinidad, — we go east till we pass by 



p 



