is
own name, and upon the beach raised a flag of his own design.

The island of Trinidad claimed by Harden-Hickey must not be confused
with the larger Trinidad belonging to Great Britain and lying off
Venezuela.

The English Trinidad is a smiling, peaceful spot of great tropical
beauty; it is one of the fairest places in the West Indies. At every
hour of the year the harbor of Port of Spain holds open its arms to
vessels of every draught. A governor in a pith helmet, a cricket club, a
bishop in gaiters, and a botanical garden go to make it a prosperous
and contented colony. But the little derelict Trinidad, in latitude
20 degrees 30 minutes south, and longitude 29 degrees 22 minutes west,
seven hundred miles from the coast of Brazil, is but a spot upon the
ocean. On most maps it is not even a spot. Except by birds, turtles, and
hideous land-crabs, it is uninhabited; and against the advances of man
its shores are fortified with cruel ridges of coral, jagged limestone
rocks, and a tremendous towering surf which, even in a dead calm, beats
many feet high against the coast.

In 1698 Dr. Halley visited the island, and says he found nothing living
but doves and land-crabs. "Saw many green turtles in sea, but by reason
of the great surf, could catch none."

After Halley's visit, in 1700 the island was settled by a few Portuguese
from Brazil. The ruins of their stone huts are still in evidence. But
Amaro Delano, who called in 1803, makes no mention of the Portuguese;
and when, in 1822, Commodore Owen visited Trinidad, he found nothing
living there save cormorants, petrels, gannets, man-of-war birds, and
"turtles weighing from five hundred to seven hundred pounds."

In 1889 E. F. Knight, who in the Japanese-Russian War represented the
London _Morning Post_, visited Trinidad in his yacht in search of buried
treasure.

Alexander Dalrymple, in his book entitled "Collection of Voages, chiefly
in the Southern Atlantick Ocean, 1775," tells how, in 1700, he "took
possession of the island in his Majesty's name as knowing it to be
granted by the King's letter patent, leaving a Union Jack flying."

So it appears that before Harden-Hickey seized the island it already had
been claimed by Great Britain, and later, on account of the Portuguese
settlement, by Brazil. The answer Harden-Hickey made to these claims
was that the English never settled in Trinidad, and that the Portuguese
abandoned it, and, therefore, their claims lapsed. In