TRINIDAD : THEN AND NOW. 



341 



We may be able to understand why the subsidy 

 of £18,000 lately granted to the Royal Mail for mak- 

 ing Trinidad headquarters should be charged to 

 the Post Office ; but it is not so easy to understand the 

 subsidy to the West India and Panama Telegraph Co. 

 and the subsidy of £7,250 for the coastal service, 

 which is of little use to the Post Office, except as re- 

 gards Tobago, should be also charged to it. 



At the time when Mr. Bulmer took over the 

 management of the Post Office, there was a great deal 

 of petty pilfering by abstracting money enclosed in 

 letters to friends and particularly to neighbouring 

 colonies, and particularly again to those sent to 

 Nevis. This caused a good deal of worry on account 

 of the difficulty of locating the exact place where the 

 peculation took place. Mr. Bulmer was of opinion 

 that it was done on the Solent, one of the intercolo- 

 nial boats, tor, strange to say, n was generally the 

 mails sent by that boat which suffered most. The 

 task of finding out the culprit w r as deputed to me, 

 and from such information as I could collect I was of 

 opinion that Nevis was the place to look for the thief. 

 I accordingly went there, but, strange to say, nothing 

 went wrong that trip. I was known to some of the 

 officers of the Solent and as it was the Solent which 

 went to the Northern Islands on that voyage it was 

 still unsatisfactory. However, notwithstanding this, 

 I suspected a boy employed by the Postmaster at 

 Nevis as a servant as being the culprit, but still Bul- 

 mer stuck to his suspicion of the Solent. I went 

 again and took with me a little cockney sailor named 



