s of
all the southern glens, sometimes to a height of several hundred
feet. Did one meet them in Scotland, one would pronounce them at
once to be old glacier-moraines. But Messrs. Wall and Sawkins, in
their geological survey of this island, have abstained from
expressing any such opinion; and I think wisely. They are more
simply explained as the mere leavings of the old sea-worn mountain
wall, at a time when the Orinoco, or the sea, lay along their
southern, as it now does along their northern, side. The terraces
in which they rise mark successive periods of upheaval; and how long
these periods were, no reasonable man dare guess. But as for traces
of ice-action, none, as far as I can ascertain, have yet been met
with. He would be a bold man who should deny that, during the abyss
of ages, a cold epoch may have spread ice over part of that wide
land which certainly once existed to the north of Trinidad and the
Spanish Main: but if so, its traces are utterly obliterated. The
commencement of the glacial epoch, as far as Trinidad is concerned,
may be safely referred to the discovery of Wenham Lake ice, and the
effects thereof sought solely in the human stomach and the increase
of Messrs. Haley's well-earned profits. Is it owing to this absence
of any ice-action that there are no lakes, not even a tarn, in the
northern mountains? Far be it from me to thrust my somewhat empty
head into the battle which has raged for some time past between
those who attribute all lakes to the scooping action of glaciers and
those who attribute them to original depressions in the earth's
surface: but it was impossible not to contrast the lakeless
mountains of Trinidad with the mountains of Kerry, resembling them
so nearly in shape and size, but swarming with lakes and tarns.
There are no lakes throughout the West Indies, save such as are
extinct craters, or otherwise plainly attributable to volcanic
action, as I presume are the lakes of tropical Mexico and Peru. Be
that as it may, the want of water, or rather of visible water, takes
away much from the beauty of these mountains, in which the eye grows
tired toward the end of a day's journey with the monotonous surges
of green woodland; and hails with relief, in going northward, the
first glimpse of the sea horizon; in going south, the first glimpse
of the hazy lowland, in which the very roofs and chimney-stalks of
the sugar-estates are pleasant to