oad followed the bottom of a densely wooded ravine;
impenetrable foliage spreading over our heads, and a limpid river
flashing along in which our horses cooled their feet and lips as we
crossed it again and again. There were the usual cabins and gardens on
either side of us, sometimes single, sometimes clustering into villages,
and high above them the rocks stood out, broken into precipices or
jutting out into projecting crags, with huge trees starting from the
crevices, dead trunks with branching arms clothed scantily with
creepers, or living giants with blue or orange-coloured flowers. Mangoes
scented the valley with their blossom. Bananas waved their long broad
leaves--some flat and unbroken as we know them in conservatories, some
split into palm-like fronds which quivered in the breeze. The cocoa pods
were ripe or ripening, those which had been gathered being left on the
ground in heaps as we see apples in autumn in an English orchard.

We passed a lady on the way who was making sketches and daring the
mosquitoes, that were feeding at leisure upon her face and arms. The
road failed us at last. We alighted with our waterproofs and luncheon
basket. A couple of half-naked boys sprang forward to act as guides and
porters--nice little fellows, speaking a French patois for their natural
language, but with English enough to earn shillings and amuse the
British tourist. With their help we scrambled along a steep slippery
path, the river roaring below, till we came to a spot where, the rock
being soft, a waterfall had cut out in the course of ages a natural
hollow, of which the trees formed the roof, and of which the floor was
the pool we had come in search of. The fall itself was perpendicular,
and fifty or sixty feet high, the water issuing at the top out of a dark
green tunnel among overhanging branches. The sides of the basin were
draped with the fronds of gigantic ferns and wild plantains, all in
wild luxuriance and dripping with the spray. In clefts above the rocks,
large cedars or gum trees had struck their roots and flung out their
gnarled and twisted branches, which were hung with ferns; while at the
lower end of the pool, where the river left it again, there grew out
from among the rocks near the water's edge tall and exquisitely grouped
acacias with crimson flowers for leaves.

[Illustration: BLUE BASIN, TRINIDAD.]

The place broke on us suddenly as we scrambled round a corner from
below. Three young blacks were