... Another sunset like the conflagration of a world, as we steam away
from Guiana;--another unclouded night; and morning brings back to us
that bright blue in the sea-water which we missed for the first time on
our approach to the main-land. There is a long swell all day, and tepid
winds. But towards evening the water once more shifts its hue--takes
olive tint--the mighty flood of the Orinoco is near.
[Illustration: COUNTRY ROAD, BARBADOES
_One rides for miles between walls of waving cane.
The white glare of the coral roads is blinding._]
Over the rim of the sea rise shapes faint pink, faint gray--misty shapes
that grow and lengthen as we advance. We are nearing Trinidad.
It first takes definite form as a prolonged, undulating, pale gray
mountain chain,--the outline of a sierra. Approaching nearer, we discern
other hill summits rounding up and shouldering away behind the chain
itself. Then the nearest heights begin to turn faint green--very slowly.
Right before the outermost spur of cliff, fantastic shapes of rock are
rising sheer from the water: partly green, partly reddish-gray where the
surface remains unclothed by creepers and shrubs. Between them the sea
leaps and whitens.
... And we begin to steam along a magnificent tropical coast,--before a
billowing of hills wrapped in forest from sea to summit,--astonishing
forest, dense, sombre, impervious to sun--every gap a blackness as of
ink. Giant palms here and there overtop the dense, foliage; and queer
monster trees rise above the forest-level against the blue,--spreading
out huge flat crests from which masses of lianas stream down. This
forest-front has the apparent solidity of a wall, and forty-five miles
of it undulate uninterruptedly by us--rising by terraces, or projecting
like turret-lines, or shooting up into semblance of cathedral forms or
suggestions of castellated architecture.... But the secrets of these
woods have not been unexplored;--one of the noblest writers of our time
has so beautifully and fully written of them as to leave little for any
one else to say. He who knows Charles Kingsley's "At Last" probably
knows the woods of Trinidad far better than many who pass them daily.
Even as observed from the steamer's deck, the mountains and forests of
Trinidad have an aspect very different from those of the other
Antilles. The heights are less lofty,--less jagged and abrupt,--with
rounded summits; the peaks of Martinique or Dominica rise fully
two thousand feet higher. The land itself is a totally different
formation,--anciently being a portion of the continent; and its flora
and fauna are of South America.
... There comes a great cool whiff of wind,--another and another;--then
a mighty breath begins to blow steadily upon us,--the breath of the
Orinoco.... It grows dark before we pass through the Ape's Mouth, to
anchor in one of the calmest harbors in the world,--never disturbed by
hurricanes. Over unruffled water the lights of Port-of-Spain shoot long
still yellow beams.... The night grows chill;--the air is made frigid by
the breath of the enormous river and the vapors of the great woods.