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IV. Extract from Inspection Report of the Island of Trinidad, made in the year 1816, by the Inspector of Hospitals, in conjunction with the Quarter-Master General and Chief Engineer for the Windward and Leeward Colonies of the West Indies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2013

William Ferguson
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Extract

Having heard at Port-of-Spain of an appearance that went by the name of the Mud Volcanoes, we took the opportunity when surveying the southern quarter of Trinidad, to examine them. They are situated near Point Icaque, the southern extremity of the island, on an alluvial tongue of land, that has been appended to the primitive rocks, where no doubt the land originally terminated. This appendage is several miles in length, and points directly into one of the mouths of the Oronoko, on the mainland, about twelve or fifteen miles off.

We landed nearly opposite to where we were told we should find the mud volcanoes, and after making our way about five miles through the woods, across the sandy isthmus, we came upon two plantations very pleasantly situated, amidst a group of remarkable round little hills, each from eighty to a hundred feet in height.

Type
Research Article
Information
Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , 1823 , pp. 93 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1823

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References

page 96 note * Even the rattlesnake, we were assured, was found here, one having been killed on the banks of the Guanapo the day before we visited it. The no less venomous mapapi (lance du fer of the French) more formidable on account of his irritable nature, and greater size (one was killed in the Napoareme eleven feet long), comes occasionally into the cultivated country, as well as the smaller poisonous coral snake and others. I have not heard that the dangerous viper of St Lucia and Martinique has been seen in Trinidad; but the abundance of the boa and alligator was manifested to a degree that could not otherwise have been believed, when the great savanah of the eastern marsh, and the underwood of the grand lagoon, were fired during a very dry season several years ago. This brought all to light from their different hiding places, and the dead carcases, as marked by the hovering of the vulture and carrion crow, were so numerous, that the air was infected for miles with the stench