The valley of Caura is situated in the Northern Range towards the north of Tacarigua and El Dorado. In the 1880's it was described by Louis de Verteuil, a local French naturalist, as 'the most picturesque spot' in the whole of Trinidad. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Spanish settlers had been recipients of between three and 120 acres of land. The Northern Range, between the Spanish capital, St. Joseph and Arima, was one of the first areas to be developed and settled for cacao cultivation. It seems that since the end of the sixteenth century there had been an encomienda at Caura with its white encomendero, or planter, and Amerindian labourers who most probably grew cacao. However, the exact location of the encomienda is not clear. Between 1688 and 1762 the population of the encomienda was between 60 and 192. In 1785 a total of 632 Indians, including 185 from Caura were resettled at Arima. Father Pedro Reyes Bravo, the last cura doctrinero of the Indian mission village was transferred to Arima along with them. The place of worship at Caura continued in use until 1797.
In the early nineteenth centry the cacao estates at Caura were among the oldest on the island and the opoulation there must been mostly Hispanic. In 1840, Frederick Brown, a land surbeyor reported to the Burnley Commission that he had surveyed a number of estates in the heights of the valley of Caura at the source of the Tacarigua River. He stated that 'the estate of Pereire, which I consider to be 2000 feet high consists of the most fertile land, producing luxuriant cocoa'. In the 1880's, according to Louis de Verteuil, Caura was cultivated in cacao, coffee and provisions,the inhabitants were mostlyh of Spanish descent and the Spanish language was universally spoken. In the eyes of de Verteuil, Caura was 'a perfect paradise'. For J.H.Collens, a British educator residing in Trinidad and author of A Guide to Trinidad (1888), Caura was a 'lovely valley'. Collens, superintendent of the Boys' Model School in POrt of Spain, wrote the book for 'the use of tourists and visitors' to the island. He was ebullient in his praise for Caura's natural beauty: "To come to the island on pleasure without taking a ride up the Caura valley would be a downright sin".... Caura fitted in quite well with the Europeans' romantic vision of tropical exotica.
To this 'perfect paradise' had come scores of Venezuelan immigrant peons since the early nineteenth century. They settled there, acquired land, married the local Spanish people and became Caureros.
