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."

So it appears that before Harden-Hickey seized the island it
already had been claimed by Great Britain, and later, on account of
the Portuguese settlement, by Brazil. The answer Harden-Hickey
made to these claims was that the English never settled in
Trinidad, and that the Portuguese abandoned it, and, therefore,
their claims lapsed. In his "prospectus" of his island,
Harden-Hickey himself describes it thus:

"Trinidad is about five miles long and three miles wide. In spite of