proceedings op the victoria institute. 343 
there was, he believed, the only vacuum pan sugar estate in the 
island — the property of J\lr. Kernahan, who had made manly 
endeavours which all his friends trusted would be crowned with 
success. Coming to Buccoo and Shir van, he said Buccoo estate 
was no longer cultivated, and as showing the pitiful condition 
to which things had come in some parts of the West Indies, fifty 
or sixty years ago this estate belonged to an English 
nobleman, who, being in want of money, sold it for £80,000, 
and such was the condition of the sugar trade and the fer- 
tility of Tobago and the excellence of the work done there, that 
in two years the purchaser had cleared off the whole sum out 
of the produce of the estate and put a handsome profit into his 
pocket. He supposed that would never be done again, but 
these things served to encourage people who were making efforts. 
There was the cave that Robinson Crusoe lived in. Some 
people had their doubts, but there could be no possible doubt 
about it because they found the skull of his goat, and that skull 
was exhibited at an exhibition here some years ago, so Tobago 
must have been Robinson Crusoe s island, and if you rode along 
the beach you could always see the man Fridays foot marks. 
He had mentioned the names of twelve bays which were really 
good ports. The fact of those twelve harbours being there, 
meant that if they asked for anything at all for Tobago, they 
must have a steamer. Grenada could not manage with one and 
got three of them, and besides that, Grenada was in a direct 
line of traffic with Trinidad, and was also a place of call of a 
number of ocean going boats every month, a thing that was nob 
likely to be the case with Tobago ; so that far better provision 
would have to be made for Tobago than had been found suffi- 
cient for Grenada. He gathered that idea because lie knew 
Tobago— he knew the country thoroughly well, and he knew the 
water — he had steered boats all round the coast, be had been 
half drowned in most uf the rivers and knew the place 
thoroughly well, and he knew that in time to come, if they were 
to get all the produce they could and encourage the planters 
and working people to add to the wealth of the island, they 
would have to provide them with a steamer of about 300 tons 
and of moderately shallow draught, put a few buoys down where 
there were rocks and shoals — and these were thoroughly well 
known to the fishermen round the coast — and this steamer 
would have to run with a tolerable amount of punctuality and 
be connected with the ocean steamers in Trinidad, and this 
ought not to be done less than once a week. The roads in 
Tobago were not carriage roads, but they were good enough for 
the French who, in days gone by, constructed them fur the 
carriage of cannon, so as to cover every little bay that lie had 
mentioned. The northern part of the island consisted of a kind 
M 
