Such was the fate of the poor gentle folk who for unknown ages had swung their hammocks to the stems of these Moriches, spinning the skin of the young leaves into twine, and making sago from the pith, and thin wine from the sap and fruit, while they warned their children not to touch the nests of the humming-birds, which even till lately swarmed around the lake.  For—­so the Indian story ran—­ once on a time a tribe of Chaymas built their palm-leaf ajoupas upon the very spot where the lake now lies, and lived a merry life.  The sea swarmed with shellfish and turtle, and the land with pine-apples; the springs were haunted by countless flocks of flamingoes and horned screamers, pajuis and blue ramiers; and, above all, by humming-birds.  But the foolish Chaymas were blind to the mystery and the beauty of the humming-birds, and would not understand how they were no other than the souls of dead Indians, translated into living jewels; and so they killed them in wantonness, and angered ‘The Good Spirit.’  But one morning, when the Guaraons came by, the Chayma village had sunk deep into the earth, and in its place had risen this lake of pitch.  So runs the tale, told some forty years since to M. Joseph, author of a clever little history of Trinidad, by an old half-caste Indian, Senor Trinidada by name, who was said then to be nigh one hundred years of age.

Surely the people among whom such a myth could spring up, were worthy of a nobler fate.  Surely there were in them elements of ‘sweetness and light,’ which might have been cultivated to some fine fruit, had there been anything like sweetness and light in their first conquerors—­the offscourings, not of Spain and Portugal only, but of Germany, Italy, and, indeed, almost every country in Europe.  The present Spanish landowners of Trinidad, be it remembered always, do not derive from those old ruffians, but from noble and ancient families, who settled in the island during the seventeenth century, bringing with them a Spanish grace, Spanish simplicity, and Spanish hospitality, which their descendants have certainly not lost.  Were it my habit to ‘put people into books,’ I would gladly tell in these pages of charming days spent in the company of Spanish ladies and gentlemen.  But I shall only hint here at the special affection and respect with which they—­and, indeed, the French Creoles likewise—­ are regarded by Negro and by Indian.

For there are a few Indians remaining in the northern mountains, and specially at Arima—­simple hamlet-folk, whom you can distinguish, at a glance, from mulattoes or quadroons, by the tawny complexion, and by a shape of eye, and length between the eye and the mouth, difficult to draw, impossible to describe, but discerned instantly by any one accustomed to observe human features.  Many of them, doubtless, have some touch of Negro blood, and are the offspring of ‘Cimarons’—­’Maroons,’ as they are still called in Jamaica.  These