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will surely find a Klondyke in this most delightful and charming island of the West.

Britain, Canada, France,
The revenue from which

Trade in Trinidad is fair. The total imports, according to Whitaker, amount to nearly 2 millions, and the exports to 2 million pounds sterling. It is chiefly carried on with Great U.S. America, and Venezuela. Government officials are paid is derived from various taxes, duties, and subsidies. The extensive trade in asphaltum, from the famous Pitch Lake of Trinidad, adds considerably to the treasury. The articles of export are principally sugar, cocoa, rum, molasses, bitters, coco-nuts, and asphalt. The imports are dry goods, cured provisions, manufactured articles, cutlery, agricultural implements, machinery, &c.

I am indebted to Mr. Clarke again for the statistics I shall quote here, showing the amount of trade done in the years 1891 and 1892

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Later statistics will show, I am persuaded, an improvement upon these figures. They have only been submitted that an idea of the trade carried on may be gathered. A large trade is done with the United States, and this is due to the agility of the Yankees. Transport means are frequent and fast between the United States and the islands. The market in this country is very luring; but I may confess that the idea of Canada, which is to give preference to all British and British Colonial produce, ought certainly to increase the trade of Trinidad in the Canadian market. my part, I see no reason why the trade with the mother country ought not to double its proportion at this time. At present little or no Trinidad fruits find their way into the English market, for the reason that special liners do not ply between Great Britain and her West Indian Colonies, to effect a safe and rapid transport, which is necessary for fruits.

For

Trinidad, as already referred to, is governed by the Crown Colony system. A Governor is sent out from England, and the Legislature consists of official and non-official members, who are nominated by the Governor and sanctioned by the Colonial Secretary of State. The element of election is foreign to the Legislature. Progressives have come to the conclusion that it has had its day, and that it would do well to be "out of the way." Some contend that Repre

sentative Government suits an educated people, and its working will not satisfy every need of the very mixed population of the island. This, to my mind, is a "bogey." The very fact that the conditions are varied, and despite this, all speak the English language, and contribute to the support of Crown Colony, is a reason a fortiori that their interests ought to be represented.

Repeatedly have I striven to rebut such feeble argument by the statement, "Narrowness sees nothing but proscription; and no matter how impressionable the line may be, it dares press beyond it."

There is no problem but has its solution; and, admitting the state of the peoples on the island to be highly problematic, what attempts have been inade to effect a solution? I am afraid the masses have not yet produced an unselfish leader. They must continue to bear the excruciating pangs of the heartless system of Crown Colony, which is a synonym for racial contempt. By it the subject fails to realise his civis Britannicus sum, and thus loses much of the pride in being a British subject. Philip Rostant did his best, and others should follow. The spirit ought never to perish, though the odds be strongly against us. There is no surer success greater than that of perseverance; and to-day, when taxation without representation is a gross crime, I see no reason why the island should be outside this happy state.

The laws of the country respecting marriage, land, industry, &c., are the same as in the United Kingdom. The Indians, or coolie immigrants, were in the habit of conforming to their own customs practised in India, ie. "infant marriage," but this has been sufficiently remedied by legislative measures. The difference between the laws in Trinidad and those of Great Britainif difference is, they are localised to meet the exigencies of insular circumstances. The principles are founded

upon Blackstone, Stephens, Bentham, and Snell. Our judges hold their seats according to the requirements of the Act of Settlement. Lands are generally freehold, the purchaser getting full title and ownership from the Crown, which is the vendor.

I have endeavoured to put before my readers plain facts, and have even tried at suggestions; but I must admit incompetence to do justice to so important a subject as this one. If my bounds have been overstepped, I have done so unconsciously, being filled with a desire to welcome a proper welfare for the people; and also with the longing wish to see every man holding and appreciating his own as a full Britisher, and not one who must be nursed, but as one who enjoys the entente cordiale of the significance.

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THE Colony of British Honduras covers an area of about 7500 square miles on the eastern slope of Central America. Its coast-line runs from the mouth of the River Hondo, discharging into the shallow, landlocked bay of Chetumal, at the southern boundary of Yucatan, the heel province of Mexico (which juts towards Cuba and Florida to embrace the Mexican Gulf). It runs to the southward, curving a little south-west, for about 160 miles to the River Sarstoon, at the innermost corner of the Gulf of Honduras, from which the shores of Guatemala and the Republic of Spanish Honduras -the "Mosquito Coast "-start out again due eastwards.

The whole length of this eastern-facing sea-board, fronting the trade-wind, which blows with hardly any interruption for eight or nine months in the year, is fenced from the attack of the ceaseless rollers that come before that wind over fifteen hundred miles of the Caribbean Sea, past Jamaica, by a line of reefs and cays-the latter low islands formed of coral detritus and sand within the shield of the reef as it grows slowly outward into blue water. The cays are, for the most part, covered with mangrove bush: bright green in the sun, above a narrow strip of dazzling white sand and coral dust, to seaward. Between them and the mangrove fringe of the coast is a belt-some eight or ten miles wide-of protected water, swarning with fish, deep enough for the frequent traffic of steamers,

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