For--so the Indian story ran-- once on a time a tribe of Chaymas built their palm-leaf ajoupas upon the very spot where the lake now lies, and lived a merry life.

The sea swarmed with shellfish and turtle, and the land with pine- apples; the springs were haunted by countless flocks of flamingoes and horned screamers, pajuis and blue ramiers; and, above all, by humming-birds.

But the foolish Chaymas were blind to the mystery and the beauty of the humming-birds, and would not understand how they were no other than the souls of dead Indians, translated into living jewels; and so they killed them in wantonness, and angered 'The Good Spirit.' But one morning, when the Guaraons came by, the Chayma village had sunk deep into the earth, and in its place had risen this lake of pitch.

So runs the tale, told some forty years since to M.Joseph, author of a clever little history of Trinidad, by an old half-caste Indian, Senor Trinidada by name, who was said then to be nigh one hundred years of age.
Surely the people among whom such a myth could spring up, were worthy of a nobler fate.

Surely there were in them elements of 'sweetness and light,' which might have been cultivated to some fine fruit, had there been anything like sweetness and light in their first conquerors--the offscourings, not of Spain and Portugal only, but of Germany, Italy, and, indeed, almost every country in Europe.