and instructive chat follows, wound up, usually, if the
house be not far off, by an invitation to come in and have a light
drink; an invitation which, considering the state of the
thermometer, you will be tempted to accept, especially as you know
that the claret and water will be excellent. And so you dawdle on,
looking at this and that new and odd sight, but most of all feasting
your eyes on the beauty of the northern mountains, till you reach
the gentle rise on which stands, eight miles from Port of Spain, the
little city of San Josef. We should call it, here in England, a
village: still, it is not every village in England which has fought
the Dutch, and earned its right to be called a city by beating some
of the bravest sailors of the seventeenth century. True, there is
not a single shop in it with plate-glass windows: but what matters
that, if its citizens have all that civilised people need, and more,
and will heap what they have on the stranger so hospitably that they
almost pain him by the trouble which they take? True, no carriages
and pairs, with powdered footmen, roll about the streets; and the
most splendid vehicles you are likely to meet are American buggies--
four-wheeled gigs with heads, and aprons through which the reins can
be passed in wet weather. But what matters that, as long as the
buggies keep out sun and rain effectually, and as long as those who
sit in them be real gentlemen, and those who wait for them at home,
whether in the city, or the estates around, be real ladies? As for
the rest--peace, plenty, perpetual summer, time to think and read--
(for there are no daily papers in San Josef)--and what can man want
more on earth? So I thought more than once, as I looked at San
Josef nestling at the mouth of its noble glen, and said to myself,--
If the telegraph cable were but laid down the islands, as it will be
in another year or two, and one could hear a little more swiftly and
loudly the beating of the Great Mother's heart at home, then would
San Josef be about the most delectable spot which I have ever seen
for a cultivated and civilised man to live, and work, and think, and
die in.

San Josef has had, nevertheless, its troubles and excitements more
than once since it defeated the Dutch. Even as late as 1837, it
was, for a few hours, in utter terror and danger from a mutiny of
free black recruits. No one in the island, civil or military, seems
to have