“Here a wonderful and most melancholy phenomenon arrested our attention. Thousands and thousands of trees covered the valley, each of them about thirty feet high; but every tree was dead, and extended its leafless boughs to another—a forest of desolation, as if nature had at some particular moment ceased to vegetate! There was no underwood or grass. On the lowest of the dead boughs, the gannets, and other seabirds, had built their nests, in numbers uncountable. Their tameness, as Cowper says, ‘was shocking to me.’ So unaccustomed did they seem to man that the mothers brooding over their young only opened their beaks, in a menacing attitude, at us as we passed by them. How to account satisfactorily for the simultaneous destruction of this vast forest of trees was very difficult; there was no want of rich earth for nourishment of the roots. The most probable cause appeared to me a sudden and continued eruption of sulphuric effluvia from the volcano; or else by some unusually heavy gale of wind or hurricane the trees had been drenched with salt water to the roots. One or the other of these causes must have produced the effect. The philosopher or the geologist must decide.”
Captain Marryat was evidently unaware that these dead trees are to be found on the heights 3,000 feet above the sea-level as well as in the valleys, or he would not have suggested salt water as the cause of their destruction.
His description proves that the trees were dead at least sixty years ago, and in all probability they had been dead for a long time before. The latest record I have been able to discover which describes live trees as existing on Trinidad is dated as far back as 1700. The Ninepin and the Sugarloaf, now utterly barren, were then crowded with trees of a great size.
Though some of this timber is rotten, a large proportion of it is not decayed in the least, but when cut with the axe presents the appearance of a sound, well-seasoned wood. It is gnarled and knotty, extremely hard and heavy, its specific gravity being but slightly less than that of water. It is of a dark reddish colour and of very close grain.
I brought a log of it home and sent it to a cabinetmaker, who found that it would take an excellent polish. On sending this specimen to Kew I was informed that the wood “probably belongs to the family Myrtaceae, and possibly to the species Eugenia.” I find that this species includes the pimento or allspice, the rose-apple, and other aromatic and fruit-producing trees; so that desert Trinidad may at one time have been a delicious spice-island.
The doctor and myself toiled on up the gully, whose slopes, as we approached the summit, became less rugged, and here the ferns grew up between the trunks of the dead trees, spreading wide their beautiful fronds of fresh green.
When we had come to a spot a little below the source of the stream we left the gully—not before we had drunk our fill and replenished the bottle—and ascended the down where the tree-ferns grow thickest. The soil is here very loose and presents the appearance of having been quite recently ploughed up, while it is honeycombed with the holes of the teeming land-crabs.
Soon we reached the summit of the plateau, where a pleasant breeze stirred the ferns and we could now command a magnificent view not only over the mountains we had climbed but over the weather side of the island as well. I remembered the scene, for I had looked down from here nine years before. On the weather side of the island the mountains are even more precipitous than on the lee side; but, on the other hand, they do not run sheer into the sea, for at their base extend great green slopes continued by broad sandy beaches. Along all this coast are shallow flats and outlying rocks on which the surf breaks perpetually. Thirty miles out to sea rise the inaccessible rocky islets of Martin Vas.
The plateau we were on was covered with a luxuriant vegetation, for in addition to the tree-ferns there were large bushes of some species of acacia—a tall thorny plant with flowers like those of scarlet-runners, and bearing large beans—flowering grasses, and various other plants. I collected specimens of these later on, which were lost, however, with other stores shortly before we abandoned the island, in consequence of the capsizing of our boat while launching her in Treasure Bay.
It seemed strange to find so beautiful a garden, high up, almost unapproachable for the perils that surround it, throned as it is on a wilderness of rock rising up to it in chaotic masses and sheer precipices from the shore far below. The sailors under Frank Mildmay discovered this grove before me. In all his descriptions of places and scenery Captain Marryat is singularly faithful to the truth, even in the minutest details. In this respect indeed he is more conscientious in his works of fiction than are most travellers in their presumedly true narratives. The most minute and accurate description of Trinidad that I have come across is in Frank Mildmay, and it is easy to identify every spot mentioned in that book. The author must himself have visited this strange place, and his imagination was strongly stirred by it. He gives us graphic pictures of “the iron-bound coast with high and pointed rocks, frowning defiance over the unappeasable and furious waves which break incessantly at their feet.” His hero also experiences the usual difficulty in landing; men and boat are nearly lost, and in all his thrilling narrative there is not the least exaggeration. All the events described might well have happened, and probably did happen.
Of the grove
