It may be worth while to spend a few pages in telling something of
the history of this lovely island since the 31st of July 1499, when
Columbus, on his third voyage, sighted the three hills in the south-
eastern part. He had determined, it is said, to name the first land
which he should see after the Blessed Trinity; the triple peaks
seemed to him a heaven-sent confirmation of his intent, and he named
the island Trinidad; but the Indians called it Iere.
He ran from Punta Galera, at the north-eastern extremity--so named
from the likeness of a certain rock to a galley under sail--along
the east and south of the island; turned eastward at Punta Galeota;
and then northward, round Punta Icacque, through the Boca Sierpe, or
serpent's mouth, into the Gulf of Paria, which he named 'Golfo de
Balena,' the Gulf of the Whale, and 'Golfo Triste,' the Sad Gulf;
and went out by the northern passage of the Boca Drago. The names
which he gave to the island and its surroundings remain, with few
alterations, to this day.
He was surprised, says Washington Irving, at the verdure and
fertility of the country, having expected to find it more parched
and sterile as he approached the equator; whereas he beheld groves
of palm-trees, and luxuriant forests sweeping down to the seaside,
with fountains and running streams beneath the shade. The shore was
low and uninhabited: but the country rose in the interior, and was
cultivated in many places, and enlivened by hamlets and scattered
habitations. In a word, the softness and purity of the climate, and
the verdure, freshness, and sweetness of the country, appeared to
equal the delights of early spring in the beautiful province of
Valencia in Spain.
He found the island peopled by a race of Indians with fairer
complexions than any he had hitherto seen; 'people all of good
stature, well made, and of very graceful bearing, with much and
smooth hair.' They wore, the chiefs at least, tunics of coloured
cotton, and on their heads beautiful worked handkerchiefs, which
looked in the distance as if they were made of silk. The women,
meanwhile, according to the report of Columbus's son, seem, some of
them at least, to have gone utterly without clothing.
They carried square bucklers, the first Columbus had seen in the New
World; and bows and arrows, with which they made feeble efforts to
drive off the Spaniards who landed at Punta Arenal, near Icacque,
and who, finding no streams, sank holes in the sand, and so filled
their casks with fresh water, as may be done, it is said, at the
same spot even now.
And there--the source of endless misery to these happy harmless
creatures--a certain Cacique, so goes the tale, took off Columbus's
cap of crimson velvet, and replaced it with a circle of gold which
he wore.
Alas for them! That fatal present of gold brought down on them
enemies far more ruthless than the Caribs of the northern islands,
who had a habit of coming down in their canoes and carrying off the
gentle Arrawaks to eat them at their leisure, after the fashion
which Defoe, always accurate, has immortalised in Robinson Crusoe.
Crusoe's island is, almost certainly, meant for Tobago; Man Friday
had been stolen in Trinidad.
Columbus came no more to Trinidad. But the Spaniards had got into
their wicked heads that there must be gold somewhere in the island;
and they came again and again. Gold they could not get; for it does
not exist in Trinidad. But slaves they could get; and the history
of the Indians of Trinidad for the next century is the same as that
of the rest of the West Indies: a history of mere rapine and
cruelty. The Arrawaks, to do them justice, defended themselves more
valiantly than the still gentler people of Hayti, Cuba, Jamaica,
Porto Rico, and the Lucayas: but not so valiantly as the fierce
cannibal Caribs of the Lesser Antilles, whom the Spaniards were
never able to subdue.
It was in 1595, nearly a century after Columbus discovered the
island, that 'Sir Robert Duddeley in the Bear, with Captain Munck,
in the Beare's Whelpe, with two small pinnesses, called the Frisking
and the Earwig,' ran across from Cape Blanco in Africa, straight for
Trinidad, and anchored in Cedros Bay, which he calls Curiapan,
inside Punta Icacque and Los Gallos--a bay which was then, as now,
'very full of pelicans.' The existence of the island was known to
the English: but I am not aware that any Englishman had explored
it. Two years before, an English ship, whose exploits are written
in Hakluyt by one Henry May, had run in, probably to San Fernando,
'to get refreshing; but could not, by reason the Spaniards had taken
it. So that for want of victuals the company would have forsaken
the ship.' How different might have been the history of Trinidad,
if at that early period, while the Indians were still powerful, a
little colony of English had joined them, and intermarried with
them. But it was not to be. The ship got away through the Boca
Drago. The year after, seemingly, Captain Whiddon, Raleigh's
faithful follower, lost eight men in the island in a Spanish ambush.
But Duddeley was the first Englishman, as far as I am aware, who
marched, 'for his experience and pleasure, four long marches through
the island; the last fifty miles going and coming through a most
monstrous thicke wood, for so is most part of the island; and
lodging myself in Indian townes.' Poor Sir Robert--'larding the
lean earth as he stalked along'--in ruff and trunk hose, possibly
too in burning steel breastplate, most probably along the old Indian
path from San Fernando past Savannah Grande, and down the Ortoire to
Mayaro on the east coast. How hot he must have been. How often, we
will hope, he must have bathed on the journey in those crystal
brooks, beneath the balisiers and the bamboos. He found 'a fine-
shaped and a gentle people, all naked and painted red' (with
roucou), 'their commanders wearing crowns of feathers,' and a
country 'fertile and full of fruits, strange beasts and fowls,
whereof munkeis, babions, and parats were in great abundance.' His
'munkeis' were, of course, the little Sapajous; his 'babions' no
true Baboons; for America disdains that degraded and dog-like form;
but the great red Howlers. He was much delighted with the island;
and 'inskonced himself'--i.e. built a fort: but he found the
Spanish governor, Berreo, not well pleased at his presence; 'and no
gold in the island save Marcasite' (iron pyrites); considered that
Berreo and his three hundred Spaniards were 'both poore and strong,
and so he had no reason to assault them.' He had but fifty men
himself, and, moreover, was tired of waiting in vain for Sir Walter
Raleigh. So he sailed away northward, on the 12th of March, to
plunder Spanish ships, with his brains full of stories of El Dorado,
and the wonders of the Orinoco--among them 'four golden half-moons
weighing a noble each, and two bracelets of silver,' which a boat's
crew of his had picked up from the Indians on the other side of the
Gulf of Paria.
He left somewhat too soon. For on the 22d of March Raleigh sailed
into Cedros Bay, and then went up to La Brea and the Pitch Lake.
There he noted, as Columbus had done before him, oysters growing on
the mangrove roots; and noted, too, 'that abundance of stone pitch,
that all the ships of the world might be therewith laden from
thence; and we made trial of it in trimming our shippes, to be most
excellent good, and melteth not with the sun as the pitch of
Norway.' From thence he ran up the west coast to 'the mountain of
Annaparima' (St. Fernando hill), and passing the mouth of the
Caroni, anchored at what was then the village of Port of Spain.
There some Spaniards boarded him, to buy linen and other things, all
which he 'entertained kindly, and feasted after our manner, by means
whereof I learned as much of the estate of Guiana as I could, or as
they knew, for those poore souldiers having been many years without
wine, a few draughts made them merrie, in which mood they vaunted of
Guiana and the riches thereof,'--much which it had been better for
Raleigh had he never heard.
Meanwhile the Indians came to him every night with lamentable
complaints of Berreo's cruelty. 'He had divided the island and
given to every soldier a part. He made the ancient Caciques that
were lords of the court, to be their slaves. He kept them in
chains; he dropped their naked bodies with burning bacon, and such
other torments, which' (continues Raleigh) 'I found afterward to be
true. For in the city' (San Josef), 'when I entered it, there were
five lords, or little kings, in one chain, almost dead of famine,
and wasted with torments.' Considering which; considering Berreo's
treachery to Whiddon's men; and considering also that as Berreo
himself, like Raleigh, was just about to cross the gulf to Guiana in
search of El Dorado, and expected supplies from Spain; 'to leave a
garrison in my back, interested in the same enterprise, I should
have savoured very much of the asse.' So Raleigh fell upon the
'Corps du Guard' in the evening, put them to the sword, sent Captain
Caulfield with sixty soldiers onward, following himself with forty
more, up the Caroni river, which was then navigable by boats; and
took the little town of San Josef.
It is not clear whether the Corps du Guard which he attacked was at
Port of Spain itself, or at the little mud fort at the confluence of
the Caroni and San Josef rivers, which was to be seen, with some old
pieces of artillery in it, in the memory of old men now living. But
that he came up past that fort, through the then primeval forest,
tradition reports; and tells, too, how the prickly climbing palm,
{58} the Croc-chien, or Hook-dog, pest of the forests, got its
present name upon that memorable day. For, as the Spanish soldiers
ran from the English, one of them was caught in the innumerable
hooks of the Croc-chien, and never looking behind him in his terror,
began shouting, 'Suelta mi, Ingles!' (Let me go, Englishman!)--or,
as others have it, 'Valga mi, Ingles!' (Take ransom for me,
Englishman!)--which name the palm bears unto this day.
So Raleigh, having, as one historian of Trinidad says, 'acted like a
tiger, lest he should savour of the ass,' went his way to find El
Dorado, and be filled with the fruit of his own devices: and may
God have mercy on him; and on all who, like him, spoil the noblest
instincts, and the noblest plans, for want of the 'single eye.'
But before he went, he 'called all the Caciques who were enemies to
the Spaniard, for there were some that Berreo had brought out of
other countreys and planted there, to eat out and waste those that
were natural of the place; and, by his Indian interpreter that he
had brought out of England, made them understand that he was the
servant of a Queene, who was the great Cacique of the North, and a
virgin, and had more Caciques under her than there were trees in
that island; and that she was an enemy to the Castellani in respect
of their tyranny and oppression, and that 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.'
Toward the end of the seventeenth century the Indians summoned up
courage to revolt, after a foolish ineffectual fashion. According
to tradition, and an old 'romance muy doloroso,' which might have
been heard sung within the last hundred years, the governor, the
Cabildo, and the clergy went to witness an annual feast of the
Indians at Arena, a sandy spot (as its name signifies) near the
central mountain of Tamana. In the middle of one of their warlike
dances, the Indians, at a given signal, discharged a flight of
arrows, which killed the governor, all the priests, and almost all
the rest of the whites. Only a Farfan escaped, not without
suspicion of forewarning by the rebels. He may have been a merciful
man and just; while considering the gentle nature of the Indians, it
is possible that some at least of their victims deserved their fate,
and that the poor savages had wrongs to avenge which had become
intolerable. As for the murder of the priests, we must remember
always that the Inquisition was then in strength throughout Spanish
America; and could be, if it chose, aggressive and ruthless enough.
By the end of the seventeenth century there were but fifteen
pueblos, or Indian towns, in the island; and the smallpox had made
fearful ravages among them. Though they were not forced to work as
slaves, a heavy capitation tax, amounting, over most of the island,
to two dollars a head, was laid on them almost to the end of the
last century. There seems to have been no reason in the nature of
things why they should not have kept up their numbers; for the
island was still, nineteen-twentieths of it, rich primeval forest.
It may have been that they could not endure the confined life in the
pueblos, or villages, to which they were restricted by law. But,
from some cause or other, they died out, and that before far
inferior numbers of invaders. In 1783, when the numbers of the
whites were only 126, of the free coloured 295, and of the slaves
310, the Indians numbered only 2032. In 1798, after the great
immigration from the French West Indies, there were but 1082 Indians
in the island. It is true that the white population had increased
meanwhile to 2151, the free coloured to 4476, and the slaves to
10,000. But there was still room in plenty for 2000 Indians.
Probably many of them had been absorbed by intermarriage with the
invaders. At present, there is hardly an Indian of certainly pure
blood in the island, and that only in the northern mountains.
Trinidad ought to have been, at least for those who were not
Indians, a happy place from the seventeenth almost to the nineteenth
century, if it be true that happy is the people who have no history.
Certain Dutchmen, whether men of war or pirates is not known,
attacked it some time toward the end of the seventeenth century,
and, trying to imitate Raleigh, were well beaten in the jungles
between the Caroni and San Josef. The Indians, it is said, joined
the Spaniards in the battle; and the little town of San Josef was
rewarded for its valour by being raised to the rank of a city by the
King of Spain.
The next important event which I find recorded is after the treaty
of 27th August 1701, between 'His Most Christian' and 'His Most
Catholic Majesty,' by which the Royal Company of Guinea, established
in France, was allowed to supply the Spanish colonies with 4800
Negroes per annum for ten years; of whom Trinidad took some share,
and used them in planting cacao. So much the worse for it.
Next Captain Teach, better known as 'Blackboard,' made his
appearance about 1716, off Port of Spain; plundered and burnt a brig
laden with cacao; and when a Spanish frigate came in, and cautiously
cannonaded him at a distance, sailed leisurely out of the Boca
Grande. Little would any Spanish Guarda Costa trouble the soul of
the valiant Captain Teach, with his six pistols slung in bandoliers
down his breast, lighted matches stuck underneath the brim of his
hat, and his famous black beard, the terror of all merchant captains
from Trinidad to Guinea River, twisted into tails, and tied up with
ribbons behind his ears. How he behaved himself for some years as a
'ferocious human pig,' like Ignatius Loyola before his conversion,
with the one virtue of courage; how he would blow out the candle in
the cabin, and fire at random into his crew, on the ground 'that if
he did not kill one of them now and then they would forget who he
was'; how he would shut down the hatches, and fill the ship with the
smoke of brimstone and what not, to see how long he and his could
endure a certain place,--to which they are, some of them, but too
probably gone; how he has buried his money, or said that he had,
'where none but he and Satan could find it, and the longest liver
should take all'; how, out of some such tradition, Edgar Poe built
up the wonderful tale of the Gold Bug; how the planters of certain
Southern States, and even the Governor of North Carolina, paid him
blackmail, and received blackmail from him likewise; and lastly, how
he met a man as brave as he, but with a clear conscience and a clear
sense of duty, in the person of Mr. Robert Maynard, first lieutenant
of the Pearl, who found him after endless difficulties, and fought
him hand-to-hand in Oberecock River, in Virginia, 'the lieutenant
and twelve men against Blackbeard and fourteen, till the sea was
tinctured with blood around the vessel'; and how Maynard sailed into
Bathtown with the gory head, black beard and all, hung at his
jibboom end; all this is written--in the books in which it is
written; which need not be read now, however sensational, by the
British public.
The next important event which I find recorded in the annals of
Trinidad is, that in 1725 the cacao crop failed. Some perhaps would
have attributed the phenomenon to a comet, like that Sir William
Beeston who, writing in 1664, says--'About this time appeared first
the comet, which was the forerunner of the blasting of the cacao-
trees, when they generally failed in Jamaica, Cuba, and Hispaniola.'
But no comet seems to have appeared in 1725 whereon to lay the
blame; and therefore Father Gumilla, the Jesuit, may have been
excused for saying that the failure of the trees was owing to the
planters not paying their tithes; and for fortifying his statement
by the fact that one planter alone, named Rabelo, who paid his
tithes duly, saved his trees and his crop.
The wicked (according to Dauxion Lavaysse, a Frenchman inoculated
somewhat with scientific and revolutionary notions, who wrote a very
clever book, unfortunately very rare now) said that the Trinidad
cacao was then, as now, very excellent; that therefore it was sold
before it was gathered; and that thus the planters were able to
evade the payment of tithes. But Senor Rabelo had planted another
variety, called Forestero, from the Brazils, which was at once of
hardier habit, inferior quality, and slower ripening. Hence his
trees withstood the blight: but, en revanche, hence also, merchants
would not buy his crop before it was picked: thus his duty became
his necessity, and he could not help paying his tithes.
Be that as it may, the good folk of Trinidad (and, to judge from
their descendants, there must have been good folk among them) grew,
from the failure of the cacao plantations, exceeding poor; so that
in 1733 they had to call a meeting at San Josef, in order to tax the
inhabitants, according to their means, toward thatching the Cabildo
hall with palm-leaves. Nay, so poor did they become, that in 1740,
the year after the smallpox had again devastated the island and the
very monkeys had died of it,--as the hapless creatures died of
cholera in hundreds a few years since, and of yellow fever the year
before last, sensibly diminishing their numbers near the towns--let
the conceit of human nature wince under the fact as it will, it
cannot wince from under the fact,--in 1740, I say the war between
Spain and England--that about Jenkins's ear--forced them to send a
curious petition to his Majesty of Spain; and to ask--Would he be
pleased to commiserate their situation? The failure of the cacao
had reduced them to such a state of destitution that they could not
go to Mass save once a year, to fulfil their 'annual precepts'; when
they appeared in clothes borrowed from each other.
Nay, it is said by those who should know best, that in those days
the whole august body of the Cabildo had but one pair of small-
clothes, which did duty among all the members.
Let no one be shocked. The small-clothes desiderated would have
been of black satin, probably embroidered; and fit, though somewhat
threadbare, for the thigh of a magistrate and gentleman of Spain.
But he would not have gone on ordinary days in a sansculottic state.
He would have worn that most comfortable of loose nether garments,
which may be seen on sailors in prints of the great war, and which
came in again a while among the cunningest Highland sportsmen,
namely, slops. Let no one laugh, either, at least in contempt, as
the average British Philistine will think himself bound to do, at
the fact that these men had not only no balance at their bankers,
but no bankers with whom to have a balance. No men are more capable
of supporting poverty with content and dignity than the Spaniards of
the old school. For none are more perfect gentlemen, or more free
from the base modern belief that money makes the man; and I doubt
not that a member of the old Cabildo of San Josef in slops was far
better company than an average British Philistine in trousers.
So slumbered on, only awakening to an occasional gentle revolt
against their priests, or the governor sent to them from the Spanish
Court, the good Spaniards of Trinidad; till the peace of 1783 woke
them up, and they found themselves suddenly in a new, and an
unpleasantly lively, world.
Rodney's victories had crippled Spain utterly; and crippled, too,
the French West Indian islands, though not France itself: but the
shrewd eye of a M. Rome de St. Laurent had already seen in Trinidad
a mine of wealth, which might set up again, not the Spanish West
Indians merely, but those of the French West Indians who had
exhausted, as they fancied, by bad cultivation, the soils of
Guadaloupe, Martinique, and St. Lucia. He laid before the Intendant
at Caraccas, on whom Trinidad then depended, a scheme of
colonisation, which was accepted, and carried out in 1783, by a man
who, as far as I can discover, possessed in a pre-eminent degree
that instinct of ruling justly, wisely, gently, and firmly, which is
just as rare in this age as it was under the ancien regime. Don
Josef Maria Chacon was his name,--a man, it would seem, like poor
Kaiser Joseph of Austria, born before his time. Among his many
honourable deeds, let this one at least be remembered; that he
turned out of Trinidad, the last Inquisitor who ever entered it.
Foreigners, who must be Roman Catholics (though on this point Chacon
was as liberal as public opinion allowed him to be), were invited to
settle on grants of Crown land. Each white person of either sex was
to have some thirty-two acres, and half that quantity for every
slave that he should bring. Free people of colour were to have half
the quantity; and a long list of conditions was annexed, which,
considering that they were tainted with the original sin of slave-
holding, seem wise and just enough. Two articles especially
prevented, as far as possible, absenteeism. Settlers who retired
from the island might take away their property; but they must pay
ten per cent on all which they had accumulated; and their lands
reverted to the Crown. Similarly, if the heirs of a deceased
settler should not reside in the colony, fifteen per cent was to be
levied on the inheritance. Well had it been for every West Indian
island, British or other, if similar laws had been in force in them
for the last hundred years.
So into Trinidad poured, for good and evil, a mixed population,
principally French, to the number of some 12,000; till within a year
or two the island was Spanish only in name. The old Spaniards, who
held, many of them, large sheets of the forests which they had never
cleared, had to give them up, with grumblings and heart-burnings, to
the newcomers. The boundaries of these lands were uncertain. The
island had never been surveyed: and no wonder. The survey has been
only completed during the last few years; and it is a mystery, to
the non-scientific eye, how it has ever got done. One can well
believe the story of the northern engineer who, when brought over to
plan out a railroad, shook his head at the first sight of the 'high
woods.' 'At home,' quoth he, 'one works outside one's work: here
one works inside it.' Considering the density of the forests, one
may as easily take a general sketch of a room from underneath the
carpet as of Trinidad from the ground. However, thanks to the
energy of a few gentlemen, who found occasional holes in the carpet
through which they could peep, the survey of Trinidad is now about
complete.
But in those days ignorance of the island, as well as the battle
between old and new interests, brought lawsuits, and all but civil
war. Many of the French settlers were no better than they should
be; many had debts in other islands; many of the Negroes had been
sent thither because they were too great ruffians to be allowed at
home; and, what was worse, the premium of sixteen acres of land for
every slave imported called up a system of stealing slaves, and
sometimes even free coloured people, from other islands, especially
from Grenada, by means of 'artful Negroes and mulatto slaves,' who
were sent over as crimps. I shall not record the words in which
certain old Spaniards describe the new population of Trinidad ninety
years ago. They, of course, saw everything in the blackest light;
and the colony has long since weeded and settled itself under a
course of good government. But poor Don Josef Maria Chacon must
have had a hard time of it while he tried to break into something
like order such a motley crew.
He never broke them in, poor man. For just as matters were
beginning to right themselves, the French Revolution broke out; and
every French West Indian island burst into flame,--physical, alas!
as well as moral. Then hurried into Trinidad, to make confusion
worse confounded, French Royalist families, escaping from the
horrors in Hayti; and brought with them, it is said, many still
faithful house-slaves born on their estates. But the Republican
French, being nearly ten to one, were practical masters of the
island; and Don Chacon, whenever he did anything unpopular, had to
submit to 'manifestations,' with tricolour flag, Marseillaise, and
Ca Ira, about the streets of Port of Spain; and to be privately
informed by Admiral Artizabal that a guillotine was getting ready to
cut off the heads of all loyal Spaniards, French, and British. This
may have been an exaggeration: but wild deeds were possible enough
in those wild days. Artizabal, the story goes, threatened to hang a
certain ringleader (name not given) at his yard-arm. Chacon begged
the man's life, and the fellow was 'spared to become the persecutor
of his preserver, even to banishment, and death from a broken
heart.' {65}
At last the explosion came. The English sloop Zebra was sent down
into the Gulf of Paria to clear it of French privateers, manned by
the defeated maroons and brigands of the French islands, who were
paying respect to no flag, but pirating indiscriminately. Chacon
confessed himself glad enough to have them exterminated. He himself
could not protect his own trade. But the neutrality of the island
must be respected. Skinner, the Zebra's captain, sailed away
towards the Boca, and found, to his grim delight, that the
privateers had mistaken him for a certain English merchantman whom
they had blockaded in Port of Spain, and were giving him chase. He
let them come up and try to board; and what followed may be easily
guessed. In three-quarters of an hour they were all burnt, sunk, or
driven on shore; the remnant of their crews escaped to Port of
Spain, to join the French Republicans and vow vengeance.
Then, in a hapless hour, Captain Vaughan came into Port of Spain in
the Alarm frigate. His intention was, of course, to protect the
British and Spanish. They received him with open arms. But the
privateers' men attacked a boat's crew of the Alarm, were beaten,
raised a riot, and attacked a Welsh lady's house where English
officers were at a party; after which, with pistol shots and
climbing over back walls, the English, by help of a few Spanish
gentlemen, escaped, leaving behind them their surgeon severely
wounded.
Next morning, at sunrise, almost the whole of the frigate's crew
landed in Port of Spain, fully armed, with Captain Vaughan at their
head; the hot Welsh blood boiling in him. He unfurled the British
flag, and marched into the town to take vengeance on the mob. A
Spanish officer, with two or three men, came forward. What did a
British captain mean by violating the law of nations? Vaughan would
chastise the rascally French who had attacked his men. Then he must
either kill the Spaniard or take him prisoner: and the officer
tendered his sword.
'I will not accept the arms of a brave man who is doing his duty,'
quoth poor over-valiant Vaughan, and put him aside. The hot Welsh
blood was nevertheless the blood of a gentleman. They struck up
'Britons, Strike Home,' and marched on. The British and Spanish
came out to entreat him. If a fight began, they would be all
massacred. Still he marched on. The French, with three or four
thousand slaves, armed, and mounting the tricolour cockade, were
awaiting them, seemingly on the Savannah north of the town. Chacon
was at his wits' end. He had but eighty soldiers, who said openly
they would not fire on the English, but on the French. But the
English were but 240, and the French twelve times that number. By
deft cutting through cross streets Chacon got between the two bodies
of madmen, and pleaded the indignity to Spain and the violation of
neutral ground. The English must fight him before they fought the
French. They would beat him: but as soon as the first shot was
fired, the French would attack them likewise, and both parties alike
would be massacred in the streets.
The hot Welsh blood cooled down before reason, and courage. Vaughan
saluted Chacon; and marched back, hooted by the Republicans, who
nevertheless kept at a safe distance. The French hunted every
English and Irish person out of the town, some escaping barely with
their lives. Only one man, however, was killed; and he, poor
faithful slave, was an English Negro.
Vaughan saw that he had done wrong; that he had possibly provoked a
war; and made for his error the most terrible reparation which man
can make.
His fears were not without foundation. His conduct formed the
principal count in the list of petty complaints against England, on
the strength of which, five months after, in October 1796, Spain
declared war against England, and, in conjunction with France and
Holland, determined once more to dispute the empire of the seas.
The moment was well chosen. England looked, to those who did not
know her pluck, to have sunk very low. Franco was rising fast; and
Buonaparte had just begun his Italian victories. So the Spanish
Court--or at least Godoy, 'Prince of Peace'--sought to make profit
out of the French Republic. About the first profit which it made
was the battle of St. Vincent; about the second, the loss of
Trinidad.
On February 14, while Jervis and Nelson were fighting off Cape St.
Vincent, Harvey and Abercrombie came into Carriacou in the
Grenadines with a gallant armada; seven ships of the line, thirteen
other men-of-war, and nigh 8000 men, including 1500 German jagers,
on board.
On the 16th they were struggling with currents of the Bocas, piloted
by a Mandingo Negro, Alfred Sharper, who died in 1836, 105 years of
age. The line-of-battle ships anchored in the magnificent land-
locked harbour of Chaguaramas, just inside the Boca de Monos. The
frigates and transports went up within five miles of Port of Spain.
Poor Chacon had, to oppose this great armament, 5000 Spanish troops,
300 of them just recovering from yellow fever; a few old Spanish
militia, who loved the English better than the French; and what
Republican volunteers he could get together. They of course
clamoured for arms, and demanded to be led against the enemy, as to
this day; forgetting, as to this day, that all the fiery valour of
Frenchmen is of no avail without officers, and without respect for
those officers. Beside them, there lay under a little fort on
Gaspar Grande island, in Chaguaramas harbour--ah, what a Paradise to
be denied by war--four Spanish line-of-battle ships and a frigate.
Their admiral, Apodaca, was a foolish old devotee. Their crews
numbered 1600 men, 400 of whom were in hospital with yellow fever,
and many only convalescent. The terrible Victor Hugues, it is said,
offered a band of Republican sympathisers from Guadaloupe: but
Chacon had no mind to take that Trojan horse within his fortress.
'We have too many lawless Republicans here already. Should the King
send me aid, I will do my duty to preserve his colony for the crown:
if not, it must fall into the hands of the English, whom I believe
to be generous enemies, and more to be trusted than treacherous
friends.'
What was to be done? Perhaps only that which was done. Apodaca set
fire to his ships, either in honest despair, or by orders from the
Prince of Peace. At least, he would not let them fall into English
hands. At three in the morning Port of Spain woke up, all aglare
with the blaze six miles away to the north-west. Negroes ran and
shrieked, carrying this and that up and down upon their heads.
Spaniards looked out, aghast. Frenchmen, cried, 'Aux armes!' and
sang the Marseillaise. And still, over the Five Islands, rose the
glare. But the night was calm; the ships burnt slowly; and the San
Damaso was saved by English sailors. So goes the tale; which, if it
be, as I believe, correct, ought to be known to those adventurous
Yankees who have talked, more than once, of setting up a company to
recover the Spanish ships and treasure sunk in Chaguaramas. For the
ships burned before they sunk; and Apodaca, being a prudent man,
landed, or is said to have landed, all the treasure on the Spanish
Main opposite.
He met Chacon in Port of Spain at daybreak. The good governor, they
say, wept, but did not reproach. The admiral crossed himself; and,
when Chacon said 'All is lost,' answered (or did not answer, for the
story, like most good stories, is said not to be quite true), 'Not
all; I saved the image of St. Jago de Compostella, my patron and my
ship's.' His ship's patron, however, says M. Joseph, was St.
Vincent. Why tell the rest of the story? It may well be guessed.
The English landed in force. The French Republicans (how does
history repeat itself!) broke open the arsenal, overpowering the
Spanish guard, seized some 3000 to 5000 stand of arms, and then
never used them, but retired into the woods. They had, many of
them, fought like tigers in other islands; some, it may be, under
Victor Hugues himself. But here they had no leaders. The Spanish,
overpowered by numbers, fell back across the Dry River to the east
of the town, and got on a height. The German jagers climbed the
beautiful Laventille hills, and commanded the Spanish and the two
paltry mud forts on the slopes: and all was over, happily with
almost no loss of life.
Chacon was received by Abercrombie and Harvey with every courtesy; a
capitulation was signed which secured the honours of war to the
military, and law and safety to the civil inhabitants; and Chacon
was sent home to Spain to be tried by a court-martial; honourably
acquitted; and then, by French Republican intrigues, calumniated,
memorialised against, subscribed against, and hunted (Buonaparte
having, with his usual meanness, a hand in the persecution) into
exile and penury in Portugal. At last his case was heard a second
time, and tardy justice done, not by popular clamour, but by fair
and deliberate law. His nephew set out to bring the good man home
in triumph. He found him dying in a wretched Portuguese inn.
Chacon heard that his honour was cleared at last, and so gave up the
ghost.
Thus ended--as Earth's best men have too often ended--the good Don
Alonzo Chacon. His only monument in the island is one, after all,
'aere perennius;' namely, that most beautiful flowering shrub which
bears his name; Warsewiczia, some call it; others, Calycophyllum:
but the botanists of the island continue loyally the name of
Chaconia to those blazing crimson spikes which every Christmas-tide
renew throughout the wild forests, of which he would have made a
civilised garden, the memory of the last and best of the Spanish
Governors.
So Trinidad became English; and Picton ruled it, for a while, with a
rod of iron.
I shall not be foolish enough to enter here into the merits or
demerits of the Picton case, which once made such a noise in
England. His enemies' side of the story will be found in M'Callum's
Travels in Trinidad; his friends' side in Robinson's Life of Picton,
two books, each of which will seem, I think, to him who will read
them alternately, rather less wise than the other. But those who
may choose to read the two books must remember that questions of
this sort have not two sides merely, but more; being not
superficies, but solids; and that the most important side is that on
which the question stands, namely, its bottom; which is just the
side which neither party liked to be turned up, because under it (at
least in the West Indies) all the beetles and cockroaches,
centipedes and scorpions, are nestled away out of sight: and there,
as long since decayed, they, or their exuviae and dead bodies, may
remain. The good people of Trinidad have long since agreed to let
bygones be bygones; and it speaks well for the common-sense and good
feeling of the islanders, as well as for the mildness and justice of
British rule, that in two generations such a community as that of
modern Trinidad should have formed itself out of materials so
discordant. That British rule has been a solid blessing to
Trinidad, all honest folk know well. Even in Picton's time, the
population increased, in six years, from 17,700 to 28,400; in 1851
it was 69,600; and it is now far larger.
But Trinidad has gained, by becoming English, more than mere
numbers. Had it continued Spanish, it would probably be, like Cuba,
a slave-holding and slave-trading island, now wealthy, luxurious,
profligate; and Port of Spain would be such another wen upon the
face of God's earth as that magnificent abomination, the city of
Havanna. Or, as an almost more ugly alternative, it might have
played its part in that great triumph of Bliss by Act of Parliament,
which set mankind to rights for ever, when Mr. Canning did the
universe the honour of 'calling the new world into existence to
redress the balance of the old.' It might have been--probably would
have been--conquered by a band of 'sympathisers' from the
neighbouring Republic of Venezuela, and have been 'called into
existence' by the massacre of the respectable folk, the expulsion of
capital, and the establishment (with a pronunciamento and a
revolution every few years) of a Republic such as those of Spanish
America, combining every vice of civilisation with every vice of
savagery. From that fate, as every honest man in Trinidad knows
well, England has saved the island; and therefore every honest man
in Trinidad is loyal (with occasional grumblings, of course, as is
the right of free-born Britons, at home and abroad) to the British
flag.