she delivered all such nations about her as were by them oppressed, and, having freed all the northern world from their servitude, had sent me to free them also, and withal to defend the country of Guiana from their invasion and conquest.  I showed them her Majesty’s picture’ (doubtless in ruff, farthingale, and stomacher laden with jewels), ’which they so admired and honoured, as it had been easy to make them idolatrous thereof.’

And so Raleigh, with Berreo as prisoner, ’hasted away toward his proposed discovery,’ leaving the poor Indians of Trinidad to be eaten up by fresh inroads of the Spaniards.

There were, in his time, he says, five nations of Indians in the island,—­’Jaios,’ ‘Arwacas,’ ‘Salvayos’ (Salivas?), ‘Nepoios,’ and round San Josef ‘Carinepagotes’; and there were others, he confesses, which he does not name.  Evil times were come upon them.  Two years after, the Indians at Punta Galera (the north-east point of the island) told poor Keymis that they intended to escape to Tobago when they could no longer keep Trinidad, though the Caribs of Dominica were ‘such evil neighbours to it’ that it was quite uninhabited.  Their only fear was lest the Spaniards, worse neighbours than even the Caribs, should follow them thither.

But as Raleigh and such as he went their way, Berreo and such as he seem to have gone their way also.  The ‘Conquistadores,’ the offscourings not only of Spain but of South Germany, and indeed of every Roman Catholic country in Europe, met the same fate as befell, if monk chroniclers are to be trusted, the great majority of the Normans who fought at Hastings.  ’The bloodthirsty and deceitful men did not live out half their days.’  By their own passions, and by no miraculous Nemesis, they civilised themselves off the face of the earth; and to them succeeded, as to the conquerors at Hastings, a nobler and gentler type of invaders.  During the first half of the seventeenth century, Spaniards of ancient blood and high civilisation came to Trinidad, and re-settled the island:  especially the family of Farfan—­’Farfan de los Godos,’ once famous in mediaeval chivalry—­if they will allow me the pleasure of for once breaking a rule of mine, and mentioning a name—­who seem to have inherited for some centuries the old blessings of Psalm xxxvii.—­

’Put thou thy trust in the Lord, and be doing good; dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.

’The Lord knoweth the days of the godly:  and their inheritance shall endure for ever.

’They shall not be confounded in perilous times; and in the days of dearth they shall have enough.’