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 su