But the little derelict Trinidad,
in latitude 20 degrees 30 minutes south, and longitude 29 degrees
22 minutes west, seven hundred miles from the coast of Brazil, is
but a spot upon the ocean. On most maps it is not even a spot.
Except by birds, turtles, and hideous land-crabs, it is uninhabited;
and against the advances of man its shores are fortified with cruel
ridges of coral, jagged limestone rocks, and a tremendous towering
surf which, even in a dead calm, beats many feet high against the
coast.
In 1698 Dr. Halley visited the island, and says he found nothing
living but doves and land-crabs. "Saw many green turtles in sea,
but by reason of the great surf, could catch none."
After Halley's visit, in 1700 the island was settled by a few
Portuguese from Brazil. The ruins of their stone huts are still in
evidence. But Amaro Delano, who called in 1803, makes no
mention of the Portuguese; and when, in 1822, Commodore Owen
visited Trinidad, he found nothing living there save cormorants,
petrels, gannets, man-of-war birds, and "turtles weighing from five
hundred to seven hundred pounds."
In 1889 E. F. Knight, who in the Japanese-Russian War
represented the London _Morning Post_, visited Trinidad in his
yacht in search of buried treasure.
Alexander Dalrymple, in his book entitled "Collection of Voages,
chiefly in the Southern Atlantick Ocean, 1775," tells how, in 1700,
he "took possession of the island in his Majesty's name as knowing
it to be granted by the King's letter patent, leaving a Union Jack
flying.
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