The Arrawaks, to do them justice, defended themselves more valiantly than the still gentler people of Hayti, Cuba, Jamaica, Porto Rico, and the Lucayas: but not so valiantly as the fierce cannibal Caribs of the Lesser Antilles, whom the Spaniards were never able to subdue.
It was in 1595, nearly a century after Columbus discovered the island, that 'Sir Robert Duddeley in the Bear, with Captain Munck, in the Beare's Whelpe, with two small pinnesses, called the Frisking and the Earwig,' ran across from Cape Blanco in Africa, straight for Trinidad, and anchored in Cedros Bay, which he calls Curiapan, inside Punta Icacque and Los Gallos--a bay which was then, as now, 'very full of pelicans.' The existence of the island was known to the English: but I am not aware that any Englishman had explored it.

Two years before, an English ship, whose exploits are written in Hakluyt by one Henry May, had run in, probably to San Fernando, 'to get refreshing; but could not, by reason the Spaniards had taken it.

So that for want of victuals the company would have forsaken the ship.' How different might have been the history of Trinidad, if at that early period, while the Indians were still powerful, a little colony of English had joined them, and intermarried with them.

But it was not to be.

The ship got away through the Boca Drago.