Trinidad is one of the seven original cities of Cuba established by Diego Velasquez.
Of their many maritime conquests the British retained only the Spanish island of Trinidad and the Dutch settlements in Ceylon.
He was successively governor of Trinidad (1866-70), Mauritius (1871-4), Fiji (1875-80), New Zealand (1880-2) and Ceylon (1883-90).
The earliest mention 'of American petroleum occurs in Sir Walter Raleigh's account of the Trinidad pitch-lake in 1595; whilst thirty-seven years later, the account of a visit of a Franciscan, Joseph de la Roche d'Allion, to the oil springs of New York was published in Sagard's Histoire du Canada.
Until 1889 it formed part of the colony of the Windward Islands, but in that year it was joined to Trinidad, its legal and fiscal arrangements, however, being kept distinct.
