Don Josef Maria Chacon was his name,a man, it would seem, like poor Kaiser Joseph of Austria, born before his time.

Foreigners, who must be Roman Catholics (though on this point Chacon was as liberal as public opinion allowed him to be), were invited to settle on grants of Crown land.

But poor Don Josef Maria Chacon must have had a hard time of it while he tried to break into something like order such a motley crew.

But the Republican French, being nearly ten to one, were practical masters of the island; and Don Chacon, whenever he did anything unpopular, had to submit to 'manifestations,' with tricolour flag, Marseillaise, and Ca Ira, about the streets of Port of Spain; and to be privately informed by Admiral Artizabal that a guillotine was getting ready to cut off the heads of all loyal Spaniards, French, and British.

Chacon begged the man's life, and the fellow was 'spared to become the persecutor of his preserver, even to banishment, and death from a broken heart.' {65} At last the explosion came.

Chacon confessed himself glad enough to have them exterminated.

Chacon was at his wits' end.

By deft cutting through cross streets Chacon got between the two bodies of madmen, and pleaded the indignity to Spain and the violation of neutral ground.

Vaughan saluted Chacon; and marched back, hooted by the Republicans, who nevertheless kept at a safe distance.

Poor Chacon had, to oppose this great armament, 5000 Spanish troops, 300 of them just recovering from yellow fever; a few old Spanish militia, who loved the English better than the French; and what Republican volunteers he could get together.

The terrible Victor Hugues, it is said, offered a band of Republican sympathisers from Guadaloupe: but Chacon had no mind to take that Trojan horse within his fortress.

He met Chacon in Port of Spain at daybreak.

The admiral crossed himself; and, when Chacon said 'All is lost,' answered (or did not answer, for the story, like most good stories, is said not to be quite true), 'Not all; I saved the image of St. Jago de Compostella, my patron and my ship's.'

Chacon heard that his honour was cleared at last, and so gave up the ghost.

Thus endedas Earth's best men have too often endedthe good Don Alonzo Chacon.

On we went, upward ever, past Cacao and Bois Immortelle orchards, and comfortable settlers' hamlets; and now and then through a strip of virgin forest, in which we began to see, for the first time, though not for the last, that 'resplendent Calycophyllum' as Dr. Krueger calls it, Chaconia as it is commonly called here, after poor Alonzo de Chacon, the last Spanish governor of this island.