drooping all along the massive branches. I endured great anxiety lest the weight of the wet verdure should break down those giant limbs, for the wood is rather soft and unsubstantial. However, no such calamity has yet occurred.

ace.

But to come back to the tropical palIt was certainly an ideal house for entertaining. I always declared that the balls gave themselves, and there never was the slightest trouble in arranging any sort of party in the large rooms, which were always as cool as possible after sunset. The ballroom was lofty, open "to all the airts that blow," and possessed a perfect floor. Then when you have Kew Gardens for decorative purposes growing outside your windows, there is not much difficulty in producing a pretty effect. Indeed, the entire house was arranged for coolness, from the great hall which went up the whole height of the building, to the wide verandahs which surrounded it on three sides. But in the bedroom accommodation there is a woful falling-off, and I was often at my wits' ends to know how to house the numerous guests who flock to these "Summer Isles of Eden" every winter. There is no place in the house for English servants, and your own and your visitors' servants can only be put up in some of the guest

rooms.

There is one magnificent bedroom which is called "the Prince's Room," as H.R.H. the Duke of York inhabited it during his last visit, in 1891. But it is a very hot room, and if you are to coax any cool air into it you must resign yourself to keeping your doors wide open. The suite of rooms generally used by the Governor are at the end of another long corridor, and, though good, comfortable, and certainly the coolest in the house, are so close to the stables that one hears the horses stamping and fidgetting all night, es

pecially when the vampire bats are tormenting them. The only back staircase in the house also passes close to these rooms, so they can hardly be described as quiet or private. Still, it was a very pretty house, and I took great pride and delight in hearing it admired.

The greatest daytime treat I could ever give my guests was to send them round the Botanical Gardens under the escort of the gifted Superintendent. They always returned hot and thirsty, but with their hands full of treasures. I think a freshly-gathered nutmeg, with its camellia-green leaves and its apricot-like fruit, enlaced with the crimson network we know later as mace, procured them the greatest joy of all. Then came breathless accounts of the soap nut with which they had washed their hands, of the ink galls with which they had written their names, of orchids growing beneath long arcades, "Out of doors, you know!" of palms of every size and sort and description, each more lovely than its neighbor, of strange lianes which, dropping down from lofty trees and swinging in the breeze, are caught and twisted by Nature's charming caprice into the most fantastic shapes imaginable.

There are many advantages connected with the Government House standing in these beautiful gardens, but it cannot be said to conduce to its privacy. I always pined for "three acres and a cow" to myself, but I never got it! A tiny iron fence, six inches from the ground, marked out the tenniscourts, and certain narrow limits beyond, which were supposed to be pri vate, and little iron notice-plates repeated the idea. But if any enterprising tourist wished to enlarge his sphere of observation, none of these trifles stood in his or her way, and I have sometimes been awakened at daylight Ly vociferous demands, just outside my

bedroom window, to know "where the electric eel lived." Poor thing, it did not live anywhere latterly, for it had died; but there was no persuading the energetic visitor, who only had 9 couple of hours in which to "do" the Botanical Gardens, that I had not secreted it in my bathroom.

I must hasten to add, however, that it was only the tourist who sometimes harried us, for it seemed well understood by the people of the island that a certain small space round the Gov. ernment House was private ground, and we never had the least difficulty with even the numerous nurses and babies who flocked, for whatever fresh air was going, to these charming gardens where the capital police band plays twice a week. We often strolled about this part of the gardens on Sunday afternoons, when most people were about, and I enjoyed it thoroughly, until it came to the final "God save the Queen," and then I confess I always felt surprised and indignant to see how few hats were taken off. Every white man, from the Governor downwards, stood bareheaded of course, from the first note to the last, so did the evercourteous foreign visitor; but hardly a well-clad, well-fed young colored man followed their example. I was always deeply ashamed at visitors seeing this lack of loyalty or manners (I don't know which). I observed the elder black men nearly always uncovered, but the dark gilded youth of Port of Spain certainly did not.

One does not realize how close Trinidad is to Venezuela until one goes there. My very first drive showed me a fine mountain range blending beautifully with the fair and extensive landscape.

"I thought there were no really high mountains in Trinidad!" I exclaimed in surprise.

"But those are not in Trinidad," was the crushing answer; "they are on the

mainland, which is only twenty miles off, just there."

I little thought, that day, how anxiously I should watch the political horizon of Venezuela! But as the supply of beef depended on the numerous revolutions or threatenings of revolutions, I grew to take the liveliest interest in those social convulsions, and I became an ardent advocate of peace at almost any price of beef.

I always longed yet never made time, I am sorry to say, to go up one of the many mouths of the Orinoco which run into our Gulf, the Gulf of Paria; many of our guests made the excursion, getting up as far as Bolivar in one of the comfortable, almost flatbottomed river steamers which provide an excellent service. The accounts brought back were always so glowing that I longed to go, but home duties and home ties pinned me firmly down.

Venezuela seems to be a perfect land of Goshen compared to even our tropical luxuriance, and the cocoa-pods, ba

nanas

If

and plantains brought back from the mainland were, without the least exaggeration, quite twice as large as those grown on the island. "But then, what would you have?" I was asked. "Trinidad is only a little bit of South America which the Orinoco has washed off from the mainland." this be so, then the mighty stream dropped several of the pieces on the way, for there are many islets, some five miles or more away from Trinidad, and towards the Bocas or mouths of the great river. These little islands are a great feature of Trinidad, and splendid places for change of air or excursions. They all have houses on them, and one tiny islet may, I think, claim to be the smallest spot of earth which holds a dwelling. It is just a rock, on the top of which is perched a small but comfortable and compact house. Beyond its outer wall is, on one side, a minute plateau about ten or

twelve feet in length, and that is all the exercise ground on the island. I was assured it was the favorite honeymoon resort, which certainly seemed putting the capabilities of companionship of the newly-married couple to a rather severe test! Fishing, boating, and bathing are the resources at the command of the islet visitors, and the air is wonderfully fresh and cool on these little fragments of the earth's surface. Whenever I could make time it was my great delight to take the Government launch with tea and a party of young friends to one of these islets, and it was certainly a delightful way of spending a hot afternoon.

Trinidad is a great place for cricket, and has a beautiful ground belonging to a private club. First-class teams often go out there to play matches, and I used to see incessant cricket practice going on on the savannah in front of Government House. Certainly that savannah is a splendid "lung" to the low-lying town, and the people of Trinidad may well be proud of it. On its southwestern side is a small walled enclosure; it is the graveyard of the original Spanish owners of the soil, and a large sugar estate once stood where races are run and cricket played nowadays. The living owners have all, long ago, disappeared; only the dead remain in their peaceful little restingplace under the shade of the spreading trees which grow inside the wall.

To return for a moment to the Botanical Gardens. Within the limits of the so-called private part is a small plot of ground planted with vegetables for the Governor's use. In my eyes it was chiefly remarkable for the three large, coarse sort of bean-vines which grew at its entrance, and which were further decorated at the top of the stick round which they clung (in very tipsy fashion) by an empty bottle and some tufts of shabby feathers. These aids to horticulture being quite new to me, I in

quired their use, and was assured they constituted the Obeah police of the garden, and that so long as those vines grew there, no young lettuce, or tomato, or yam would be stolen from that garden; and certainly theft was never assigned as the reason for the scanty contents of the gardener's daily basket. It was always the time of year or the weather.

I used to feel very envious when some of the older residents would speak of these gardens as having been the home of the humming-bird. Alas! the lovely little creatures are seldom to be seen there now, in spite of the protective legislation of many years past. But the ruthless tourist will always buy a humming-bird's nest, especially with its two sugarplum-like eggs in it, so the enterprising black boy keeps a sharp lookout for these articles of commerce. Soon after we first went there, I found a wee nest on a low branch of a tree close to Government House, with a darling little bird sitting in it. I peeped cautiously very often during the next few days, and the young mother grew so accustomed to my visits that she would let me stand within a yard of the bough. At last some microscopic fragments of eggshell appeared on the moss beneath, and on my next visit when the little hen was away getting food, I beheld a thing very like a bee with a beak. This object seemed to grow amazingly every few hours so that in a week it looked quite like a respectable bird. Imagine my rage and despair when I found one morning the branch broken off and the baby bird dead on the ground. My sweet little nest had been taken for the sake of the sixpence it would fetch next time a tourist-laden yacht came in!

A much happier fate attended a humming-bird which built its nest in a small palm growing in a friend's drawing-room. I paid many visits to that

drawing-room during the bird's occupancy, and anything so interesting as its manners and customs cannot be imagined. Instead of bringing material from outside for the nest, the tiny builder requisitioned the floss silk from an embroidered cushion and the wool from a ball-fringe. The nest, unusually gay in color, hung down a couple of inches from one of the serrated points of the palm leaf; but when I was first invited to come and look on, it was not quite completed to the feathered lady's satisfaction, for she still darted in and out of the open windows and about the

room.

The master of the house, at my request, seated himself in his usual armchair and opened his newspaper, and I made myself as small as I could in a distant corner. Our patience was soon rewarded, for there was the little bird balancing itself with its vibrating wings just above the newspaper. However, as no building material was forthcoming from that source, she flashed over to my corner, and, quicker than the eye could follow, had snatched a thread of silk from a work-table and was off to her work again. The little creature got quite tame, and her confidence was well placed, for nothing could exceed the charming kindness of her host and hostess. The eggs were laid and hatched in due time, and the master of the house told me he used to get up at the day-dawn and open his drawing-room window to let the little mother out to get food for her babies. This necessitated his remaining the rest of the morning in the drawingroom, as he thought it would not have been safe to have left it. I naturally thought he feared for the safety of his wife's pretty things, but oh, no-what he guarded was the nest, lest it should meet the fate of mine and be stolen.

It was on this occasion I found out what humming-birds feed on. The popular idea is that they live on honey,

and attempts have often been made to keep them in captivity on honey, or sugar and water, with the result that the poor little birds died of starvation in a day or two. The honey theory has sprung from seeing the birds darting their long bills and still longer tongues into the cups of honey-bearing flowers. What they are getting, however, is not honey, but the minute insect which is attracted and caught by the honey.

I never saw any but the commonest sort of humming-bird during my stay in Trinidad, and very few of those, and I was told that even in the high woods it was rare now to behold them. In spite of the stringent ordinance against killing colibris, I fear many skins are taken away every year by the tourist, especially by the scientific tourist. Never can I forget my feelings when, on bidding adieu to a delightful foreign savant, he informed me that he had enjoyed his trips into the interior of the island immensely, and had collected many interesting specimens of flora and fauna, including a hundred humming-bird skins! I nearly fainted with horror, but my one effort then was to prevent this dreadful boast reaching the Governor's ears, for I felt sure that international complications of a very grave character would have followed.

Pages might be written on the scientific value of the beautiful gardens which surround this tropical palace, as well as the opportunity they afford of studying insect life. At first it is disappointing to see So few flowers in them, but in the summer the large trees are covered with blossom, and, in fact, the flowers may be said to have taken refuge up the trees from the alldevouring ants. But the serious business of the gardens is really to make experiments in the growth and culti vation of the various economic products of the island-raising seedling canes, coffee and cocoa, and determin