ss, or plucking the
young shoots of the graceful bamboos so often fringing our path.
Villages and straggling cottages, with palm thatch and _adobe_ walls,
are passed, orange or bread-fruit shading the little garden, and
perhaps a mango towering over all. The proprietor is still at work on
the plantation, but his wife is preparing the evening meal, while the
children, almost naked, play in the sunshine.

[Illustration--Black and White Plate: The Home of the Cacao.
(_One of Messrs. Cadburys' Estates, Maracas, Trinidad._)]

The cacao-trees of neighbouring planters come right down to the ditch
by the roadside, and beneath dense foliage, on the long rows of stems
hang the bright glowing pods. Above all towers the _bois immortelle_,
called by the Spaniards _la madre del cacao_, "the mother of the
cacao." In January or February the _immortelle_ sheds its leaves and
bursts into a crown of flame-coloured blossom. As we reach the
shoulder of the hill, and look down on the cacao-filled hollow, with
the _immortelle_ above all, it is a sea of golden glory, an
indescribably beautiful scene. Now we note at the roadside a plant of
dragon's blood, and if we peer among the trees there is another just
within sight; this, therefore, is the boundary of two estates. At an
opening in the trees a boy slides aside the long bamboos which form
the gateway, and a short canter along a grass track brings us to the
open savanna or pasture around the homestead.

Here are grazing donkeys, mules, and cattle, while the chickens run
under the shrubs for shelter, reminding one of home. The house is
surrounded with crotons and other brilliant plants, beyond which is a
rose garden, the special pride of the planter's wife. If the sun has
gone down behind the western hills, the boys will come out and play
cricket in the hour before sunset. These savannas are the beauty-spots
of a country clothed in woodland from sea-shore to mountain-top.

[Illustration--Black and White Plate: Ortinola, Maracas, Trinidad.]

Next morning we are awaked by a blast from a conch-shell. It is 6.30,
and the mist still clings in the valley; the sun will not be over the
hills for another hour or more, so in the cool we join the labourers
on the mule-track to the higher land, and for a mile or more follow a
stream into the heart of the estate. If it is crop-time, the men will
carry a _goulet_--a hand of steel, mounted on a long bamboo--by the
sharp edges of which the pods are cut f