1894
April 3
(No 3)
Trinidad, B.W.I.
Caura
  This drive is without any exception the most
beautiful that I have ever taken anywhere. The
road follows the course of the Caura River most
of the way but it frequently bans[?] the bed of
that stream and ascends or descends the nearly
vertical slopes on either side by a succession of short
zig zags. It crosses the stream by fords no less than
nineteen times. For its entire distance it is singularly
picturesque each short, straight reach being overhung
by trees or bordered by chumps of tall bamboos
with every now and then a cluster of palms,
and the river, with its clear water and rippling
shallows in which small, trout-like fish were
darting about or leaping in play above the
surface, was very like one of our White Mt. Streams.
There were fewer birds than at Caparo and
I saw nothing new.

Lichfold's house is situated at the very head of the
Caura Valley in the end of a cul-de-sac as it were with
steep mountain slopes rising 1000 to 1500 feet above it on every
side. These slopes are covered with the densest [?]
vegetation which to the eye of a novice appears to wholly
primitive forest but really there are few areas of high
woods left the greater portion of the country being covered
with densely-grown scrub or old cacao plantations in
which the bois immortel trees are of very great size
sixty to seventy-five feet in height and three or four
feet through at the base with buttressed roots like ceibas.
These bois immortels are of a different species from
those which we have seen at Caparo but they have