arching over our heads like parasols of green lace, between us and
the sky, were tall tree-ferns, as fine as those on the mountain
slopes.

In front of us opened a flat meadow of a few acres; and beyond it,
spur upon spur, rose a noble mountain, in so steep a wall that it
was difficult to see how we were to ascend.

Ere we got to the mountain foot, some of our party had nigh come to
grief. For across the Savanna wandered a deep lagoon brook. The
only bridge had been washed away by rains; and we had to get the
horses through as we could, all but swimming them, two men on each
horse; and then to drive the poor creatures back for a fresh double
load, with fallings, splashings, much laughter, and a qualm or two
at the recollection that there might be unpleasant animals in the
water. Electric eels, happily, were not invented at the time when
Trinidad parted from the Main, or at least had not spread so far
east: but alligators had been by that time fully developed, and had
arrived here in plenty; and to be laid hold of by one, would have
been undesirable; though our party was strong enough to have made
very short work with the monster.

So over we got, and through much mud, and up mountains some fifteen
hundred feet high, on which the vegetation was even richer than any
we had seen before; and down the other side, with the great lowland
and the Gulf of Paria opening before us. We rested at a police-
station--always a pleasant sight in Trinidad, for the sake of the
stalwart soldier-like brown policemen and their buxom wives, and
neat houses and gardens a focus of discipline and civilisation amid
what would otherwise relapse too soon into anarchy and barbarism; we
whiled away the time by inspecting the ward police reports, which
were kept as neatly, and worded as well, as they would have been in
England; and then rolled comfortably in the carriage down to Port of
Spain, tired and happy, after three such days as had made old blood
and old brains young again.

CHAPTER XII: THE SAVANNA OF ARIPO

The last of my pleasant rides, and one which would have been perhaps
the pleasantest of all, had I had (as on other occasions) the
company of my host, was to the Cocal, or Coco-palm grove, of the
east coast, taking on my way the Savanna of Aripo. It had been our
wish to go up the Orinoco, as far as Ciudad Bolivar (the Angostura
of Humboldt's travels), to see the new capital of Southern