Trinidad - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 96

a description of which I don't want to afflict the reader. Hotel cooking in the island is so appalling that
a stretcher may profitably be ordered at the same time as dinner. Fortunately, owing to the profusion of
excellent Chinese and Indian restaurants in Port of Spain, it is a scourge that can usually be evaded; and
the food in Trinidadian houses is excellent. The only danger that remains is the Cascadura fish, which
has the legendary property, like the water of the Nile with respect to Egypt— Qui aquam Nili bibit rursus
bibet —of casting a spell over anyone who eats it, making him, ever afterwards, unable to live far from
Trinidad. So great care must be taken when ordering.
Drawing a comparison between Barbados and Trinidad is almost irresistible, and it is a contest in which,
in spite of the beautiful churches and houses of Barbados and of the gracelessness and the sodden climate
of Port of Spain, Trinidad, for me, wins, hands down. Trinidadians are free of the characteristics which,
among the Barbadians, impair the quiet beauty of the coral island; and whatever the colour feeling in
Trinidad may be, it does not fly at you the moment you arrive and lodge in your gullet for ever. The Trin-
idadians appear, by contrast, fantastically carefree and cheerful and definite, and the dominating attribute
of the islanders, both black and white, is certainly their vitality.
For so large and, now, so rich an island, Trinidad has had an odd career. Columbus claimed it for Spain
on his third voyage, and dubbed it 'the Trinity' after the three peaks in the south of the island. Then, after
adventuring through the Serpent's Mouth and trading with the Caribs in the Gulf of Paria, he sailed away
again to the north through the Dragons' Mouths, the channel which divides its north-western promon-
tory from modern Venezuela. Sir Walter Raleigh, pausing here on his quest for Eldorado, sacked the new
Spanish capital; and Sir Robert Dudley, [1] that striking and unhappy figure of the English renaissance,
made a youthful argosy to the island, and landed here, like Jason on the Colchian shore. Marching in-
land in full plate-armour, with drums beating and banners unfurled at the head of his little phalanx, he
ceremoniously claimed the island for his Queen; and sailed away for ever, leaving no token of his quix-
otic pretension but a superbly magniloquent and challenging inscription nailed to the trunk of a tree. The
island, during the following centuries, suffered the customary fortunes of the lesser Spanish Caribbees;
Peru and Mexico, as usual, drew from the island all that was enterprising, and the dwindling Spanish
colony mouldered miserably on, unable to hear Mass, for lack of a priest, more than once a year; so poor
that they were forced, for the occasion, to borrow each other's clothes, and reduced, by the middle of the
eighteenth century, to only one set of small clothes, which was the common property of the entire admin-
istrative body. In 1783 the population numbered no more than three hundred souls. A policy of throwing
the fertile island open to immigration was then adopted, and at the turn of the century the population had
risen to almost twenty thousand. All kinds of people flocked to Trinidad. But the bulk of the new settlers
were French. The British landing of a small force to back their countrymen in a street brawl between Brit-
ish sailors and French privateersmen was one of the reasons for a Spanish declaration of war on Britain in
1797. At the approach of a British expedition to invade the island, the Spanish admiral fired the Spanish
ships in the harbour, and the Governor, Don José Maria Chacon, surrendered Trinidad to Abercromby
and Picton. It was declared officially British at the treaty of Amiens in 1802.
Although the Spanish occupation of the island lasted two centuries longer than in any of the lesser
Antilles, it has left little mark on the island either culturally or architecturally. A number of Spanish fam-
ilies still exist and one often hears Spanish spoken in the streets—usually as the results of the closeness
of Venezuela. There are many French families, and many descendants of French Royalists, who escaped
here from the French Antilles during the Revolution, still survive. There are small Portuguese and Jewish