Well had it been for every West Indian island, British or other, if similar laws had been in force in them for the last hundred years.
So into Trinidad poured, for good and evil, a mixed population, principally French, to the number of some 12,000; till within a year or two the island was Spanish only in name.

The old Spaniards, who held, many of them, large sheets of the forests which they had never cleared, had to give them up, with grumblings and heart-burnings, to the newcomers.

The boundaries of these lands were uncertain.

The island had never been surveyed: and no wonder.

The survey has been only completed during the last few years; and it is a mystery, to the non-scientific eye, how it has ever got done.