mountain forests and the sea there is a belt of palm
groves, sugar plantations, and the dwelling-places
of a sparse population, numbering less than 20,000
in all. There are several small bays upon the coast,
but the only one much used is in the south-west
where the port and town of Scarborough lies. This
is the capital and chief trading-place, and though it
has barely 1200 inhabitants there was formerly an
export trade from it of $400,000 yearly value, mostly
in sugar.
Tobago lies so that the trade-winds sweep both its
coasts, and it has a healthy climate. It has a tropical
profusion of plants and animals, substantially
like those of Trinidad, and belonging in the main to
the South American system of flora and fauna,
though with a mixture of West Indian varieties.
T h e name in the form Tobaco was a Carib word
applied to a kind of pipe in which the dried leaves
which the natives called cohiba were smoked.
When the island was discovered it was occupied by
Caribs, who were afterwards driven out by Arawaks
from Trinidad, taking refuge in St. Vincent. It
had been desolate and deserted for a long time,
when some Dutch traders from Flushing set up a
station there. This was broken up and the settlers
killed or carried away by Spaniards from Trinidad,
but another party of Flushingers, or Fichilingos, as
the Spanish called them, took possession in 1654.
I t is said that in the interval of solitude an English
seaman was cast away upon the island, and that his
experience furnished the suggestion for the story of
Robinson Crusoe, the man Friday being a Carib,
and the savages who afterwards appeared being
Arawaks from Trinidad. Tobago, and not Juan
Fernandez, where Alexander Selkirk was cast
ashore, is now regarded as the real Crusoe’s island.
The Dutch traders had the sagacity to make their
island neutral ground in commerce and hold it open
to settlers from all quarters, but the result was that
the English element gained a preponderance, and
the “ powers ” which made the treaty of Versailles
in 1763 gave it to Great Britain as a permanent possession.
There had been a considerable number of
French Huguenots among the settlers, but in 1793
all remaining Frenchmen were expelled by act of
the colonial assembly. There had been a system
of bringing out labourers from Scotland under three-
year contracts— the “ thirty-six months’ m e n ” —
but it was superseded by the more profitable use of
African slaves, and the cultivated land, not more
than an eighth of the area at any time, was occupied
chiefly by sugar plantations. T h e abolition of slavery
had a depressing effect, and there are but a few
hundred white people left in the island. Still, the
large plantations have been maintained, and sugar
has continued to be the chief product for export,
though cacao, coffee, and fruits are raised to a slowly
increasing extent. The island has the disadvantage
of being off the main lines of trade, and is almost
left to the keeping of the native negroes. It is a ttached
to the Windward Islands colony, and has an
administrator and a legislative council, but the latter
consists of six members of whom three are officials
and the other three are appointed by the governor.