Trinidad

The Nuttall Encyclopedia

The largest of the Windward Is lands, and most southerly of the Antilles ( q. v .), lies off the mouth of the Orinoco, 7 m. from the coast of Venezuela; is of great fertility, with a hot, humid, but not unhealthy climate; sugar, coffee, tobacco, and cocoa are the chief exports; a source of great wealth is a wonderful pitch lake which, despite the immense quantities annually taken from it, shows no perceptible diminution; inhabitants are mainly French; taken by the British in 1797, and forms, with Tobago, a crown colony; capital, Port of Spain.