812 



TRINIDAD I THEN AND NOW. 



There are not many places dn the colony where 

 greater strides have been made and finer cocoa plan- 

 tations been recently opened than along the Moruga 

 Road and on to La Lune. In my early days travelling 

 alone through this district was wearisome. It was a 

 mass of forest, occupied by red monkeys, flocks of 

 green parrots and, it was said by a planter well 

 known for his veracity, by lions also — although I 

 never saw or heard any yet he positively alleged it. 

 He had been a sugar planter in another part of the 

 colony and I suppose, like others, foreseeing sugar'* 

 downfall, changed to cocoa. He was, I think, the 

 pioneer of cocoa planting in the Moruga district, or 

 at least cocoa planting on a large scale. 



Now the whole of that jungle, for miles each 

 side of this road has been opened up, the roads over 

 the steep hills diverted, the road made driveable even 

 by the motor car — I recently travelled over dt in one 

 in 40 minutes, it formerly took not less than six 

 hours — I wonder what has become of the roaring 

 lions, the red howling monkeys and the screaming 

 parrots, in those days if you did not know you would 

 think that you were a good many miles from civiliza- 

 tion, whereas in reality you were quite close to it. 

 Sometimes the crowing of a cock or the braying of a 

 donkey reminded you that you were in the neigh- 

 bourhood of civilization. 



Peasant Contractors. 

 If we want a fair illustration of what the pea- 

 sant contractors have done for the cocoa industry in 

 Trinidad, and the almost insurmountable difficulties 



