uld
have been a dreary waste of mud and sand.

These Savannas of Trinidad stand, it must be remembered, in the very
line where, on such a theory, they might be expected to stand, along
the newest deposit; the great band of sand, gravel, and clay rubbish
which stretches across the island at the mountain-foot, its highest
point in thirty-six miles being only two hundred and twenty feet--an
elevation far less than the corresponding depression of the Bocas,
which has parted Trinidad from the main Cordillera. That the
rubbish on this line was deposited by a river or estuary is as clear
to me as that the river was either a very rapid one, or subject to
violent and lofty floods, as the Orinoco is now. For so are best
explained, not merely the sheets of gravel, but the huge piles of
boulder which have accumulated at the mouth of the mountain gorges
on the northern side.

As for the southern shore of this supposed channel of the Orinoco,
it at once catches the eye of any one standing on the northern
range. He must see that he is on one shore of a vast channel, the
other shore of which is formed by the Montserrat, Tamana, and
Manzanilla hills; far lower now than the northern range, Tamana only
being over a thousand feet, but doubtless, in past ages, far higher
than now. No one can doubt this who has seen the extraordinary
degradation going on still about the summits, or who remembers that
the strata, whether tertiary or lower chalk, have been, over the
greater part of the island, upheaved, faulted, set on end, by the
convulsions seemingly so common during the Miocene epoch, and since
then sawn away by water and air into one rolling outline, quite
independent of the dip of the strata. The whole southern two thirds
of Trinidad represent a wear and tear which is not to be counted by
thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of years; and yet which, I
verily believe, has taken place since the average plants, trees, and
animals of the island dwelt therein.

This elevation may have well coincided with the depression of the
neighbouring Gulf of Paria. That the southern portion of that gulf
was once dry land; that the Serpent's Mouth did not exist when the
present varieties of plants and animals were created, is matter of
fact, proven by the identity of the majority of plants and animals
on both shores. How else--to give a few instances out of hundreds--
did the Mora, the Brazil-nut, the Cannon-bal