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This was the Cocal; and it was worth coming all the way from England to see it alone. I at once felt the truth of my host's saying, that if I went to the Cocal I should find myself transported suddenly from the West Indies to the East. Just such must be the shore of a Coral island in the Pacific. These Cocos, be it understood, are probably not indigenous.
The most remarkable, and to me unexpected, peculiarity of a Cocal is one which I am not aware whether any writer has mentioned; namely, the prevalence of that amber hue which we remarked in the very first specimens seen at St. Thomas's.
A hospitable welcome was extended to Stuart at the house of the Nariva Cocal, and, after dinner, the planter took him to the shores of the Nariva River, not more than twenty or thirty yards from the house, which, at this place, had a bank free of marsh for a distance of perhaps a couple of hundred yards.
Very glad to have you as my guest, if you wish, and the trip will give you a good view of the island. Then we can chat on the way." Stuart jumped at the opportunity. This was exactly what he was after, for the Nariva Cocal, with its thirteen-mile long coco-nut grove on the shore of the ocean, is famous.
James, a resident of Barbados, but whose commercial interests were mainly in Trinidad. Since, then, this gentleman evidently knew the life in both islands, his comparisons would be of value, and the following day Stuart asked him for a second interview. "I'm starting out to my place on the Nariva Cocal," the planter replied, "going in about an hour.
Inside the Cocal, two hundred yards to the westward, stretches inland a labyrinth of lagoons and mangrove swamps, impassable to most creatures save alligators and boa-constrictors.
How we took off our saddles, sat down on the sand, hallooed, waited; how a black policeman whose house was just being carried away by the sea appeared at last with a canoe; how we and our baggage got over one by one in the hollow log without by seeming miracle being swept out to sea or upset: how some horses would swim, and others would not; how the Negroes held on by the horses till they all went head over ears under the surf; and how, at last, breathless with laughter and anxiety for our scanty wardrobes, we scrambled ashore one by one into prickly roseau, re-saddled our horses in an atmosphere of long thorns, and then cut our way and theirs out through scrub into the Cocal; all this should not be written in these pages, but drawn for the benefit of Punch, by him who drew the egg-stealing frog whose pencil I longed for again and again amid the delightful mishaps of those forest rambles, in all of which I never heard a single grumble, or saw temper lost for a moment.
But this is, certainly, the mark which distinguishes the Coco palm, not merely from the cold dark green of the Palmiste, or the silvery gray of the Jagua, but from any other tree which I have ever seen. When inside the Cocal, the air is full of this amber light. Gradually the eye analyses the cause of it, and finds it to be the resultant of many other hues, from bright vermilion to bright green.
The sea is very deep close to the shore, which is fronted by sharp coral-rocks. Captain Eeg compares the lagoon with that of other coral-islands; and he distinctly says, the land is "very low." I have therefore coloured it blue. GRAN COCAL is said in Krusenstern's "Memoir," to be low, and to be surrounded by a reef; it is small, and therefore probably once contained a lagoon; uncoloured.
The dog that runs never starves!* Come, let's spend it all! You shall treat. * Chuquel sos pirela, cocal terela. "The dog that runs finds a bone." Gipsy proverb. "We had turned back toward Seville. At the entrance of the Calle de la Serpiente she bought a dozen oranges, which she made me put into my handkerchief. A little farther on she bought a roll, a sausage, and a bottle of manzanilla.
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