goats
should drink it. Of old, it was kept with care and dried down to a
gum, and used to poison arrows, as it is still used, I believe, on
the Orinoco; now, its poisonous properties are expelled by boiling
it down into Cassaripe, which has a singular power of preserving
meat, and is the foundation of the 'pepperpot' of the colonists.

And this is all that remains of the once beautiful, deft, and happy
Indians of Trinidad, unless, indeed, some of them, warned by the
fate of the Indians of San Josef and the Northern Mountains, fled
from such tyrants as Juan Bono and Berreo across the Gulf of Paria,
and, rejoining their kinsmen on the mainland, gladly forgot the
sight of that Cross which was to them the emblem, not of salvation,
but of destruction.

For once a year till of late--I know not whether the thing may be
seen still--a strange phantom used to appear at San Fernando, twenty
miles to the north. Canoes of Indians came mysteriously across the
Gulf of Paria from the vast swamps of the Orinoco; and the naked
folk landed, and went up through the town, after the Naparima ladies
(so runs the tale) had sent down to the shore garments for the
women, which were worn only through the streets, and laid by again
as soon as they entered the forest. Silent, modest, dejected, the
gentle savages used to vanish into the woods by paths known to their
kinsfolk centuries ago--paths which run, wherever possible, along
the vantage-ground of the topmost chines and ridges of the hills.
The smoke of their fires rose out of lonely glens, as they collected
the fruit of trees known only to themselves. In a few weeks their
wild harvest was over; they came back through San Fernando; made,
almost in silence, their little purchases in the town, and paddled
away across the gulf towards the unknown wildernesses from whence
they came.

And now--as if sent to drive away sad thoughts and vain regrets--
before our feet lay a jest of Nature's, almost as absurd as a 'four-
eyed fish,' or 'calling-crab.' A rough stick, of the size of your
little finger, lay on the pitch. We watched it a moment, and saw
that it was crawling--that it was a huge Caddis, like those in
English ponds and streams, though of a very different family. They
are the larvae of Phryganeas--this of a true moth. {158} The male
of this moth will come out, as a moth should, and fly about on four
handsome wings. The female will never develop her