Excerpt from Outline of the Flora of Trinidad
Trinidad exhibits - if not on a grand scale, at least within striking and well defined limits - the distinctive characteristics of an intertropical American country. The variety of its soil and formations, the abundant supply of water with which it is blessed, give to the vegetable covering of this island the glowing colours, the richness and grandeur of forms which astonish and charm the admirer and lover of nature, and invite the thoughtful and scientfic mind to study and meditation. No wonder that the grateful Indian called this spot a paradise, swinging away his eventless life in the chinchorro, whilst below and around, the teeming soil spontaneously afforded him not only the necessaries, but even the luxuries of life.
"Mollia secur? peragebant otia gentes;
Ipsa quoque immunis, rastroque intacta, nec ullis
Saucia vomeribus, per se dabat omnia, tellus."
Ovid i 12.
But Ovid did not dream of South America; nor could he have foreseen its history, or he would, in his description of the other ages of the world, have depicted in vivid colours the civilising bloodhounds, and the taming whip of the slaveholder, as prominent features in the drama of a far-distant era - the Age of Christianity!
"The character of a population depends greatly, though not solely, on the aspect of the vegetable world of a country," says Von Humboldt, in his "Views of Nature."
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