But there were warm hearts and kind faces waiting us on the quay, and good news too.  The gentlemen at the Custom-house courteously declined the least inspection of our luggage; and we were at once away in the train home.  At first, I must confess, an English winter was a change for the worse.  Fine old oaks and beeches looked to us, fresh from ceibas and balatas, like leafless brooms stuck into the ground by their handles; while the want of light was for some days painful and depressing But we had done it; and within the three months, as we promised.  As the king in the old play says, ’What has been, has been, and I’ve had my hour.’  At last we had seen it; and we could not unsee it.  We could not not have been in the Tropics.

Footnotes: 

{4} Raleigh’s Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Iles of Azores.

{8} Chiroteuthi and Onychoteuthi.

{15a} Cocoloba uvifera.

{15b} Plumieria.

{25a} Anona squamosa.

{25b} A. muricata.

{25c} A. chierimolia.

{25d} A. reticulata.

{26a} Persea gratissima.

{26b} Dioscorea.

{26c} Colocasia esculcuta.

{27a} Dr. Davy’s West Indies.

{27b} An account of the Souffriere of Montserrat is given by Dr. Nugent, Geological Society’s Transactions, vol. i., 1811.

{28} For what is known of these, consult Dr. Nugent’s ’Memoir on the Geology of Antigua,’ Transactions of Geological Society, vol. v., 1821.  See also Humboldt, Personal Narrative, book v. cap. 14.

{33} Acrocomia.

{36} Naval Chronicles, vol. xii. p. 206.

{38} Craspedocephalus lanceolatus.

{40} Coluber variabilis.

{43a} Breen’s St. Lucia, p. 295.

{43b} Personal Narrative, book v. cap. 14.

{44} Dr. Davy.

{52a} Ipomaea Horsfallii.

{52b} Spondias lutea.

{58} Desmoncus.

{65} M. Joseph, History of Trinidad, from which most of these facts are taken.

{74} Clitoria Ternatea; which should be in all our hothouses.

{77} Peperomia.

{78a} Sabal.

{78b} Poinziana.

{78c} Pandanus.

{78d} Tecoma (serratifolia?)

{78e} Panicum jumentorum.

{79a} Cecropia.

{79b} Andira inermis.

{79c} Acrocomia sclerocarpa.

{79d} Eriodendron anfractuosum.

{81a} Heliconia Caribaea.

{81b} Lygodium venustum.

{81c} Inga Saman; ‘Caraccas tree.’

{81d} Hura crepitans.

{81e} Erythrina umbrosa.

{82a} Caryota.

{82b} Maximiliana.

{83a} Philodendron.

{83b} Calamus Rotangi, from the East Indies.

{83c} Garcinia Mangostana, from Malacca.  The really luscious and famous variety has not yet fruited in Trinidad.