TOBAGO, an island in the British West Indies, 20 M. N.E. of Trinidad, in I I° 15' N. and 6o° 4o' W. Pop. (193 1) 25.358. It is 26 DI. long and 72 M. broad. Area 114 sq.m. or 73,313 acres, of which about I o,000 are under cultivation. It consists of a single mountain mass (volcanic in origin), 18 m. long, rising in the centre to a height of 1,800 ft. A great part of the island is clothed with dense forest. The higher lands are set apart as "Rain Preserve," where trees are not allowed to be felled. The average temperature is 81° F and the yearly rainfall is 66 in. The rainy season lasts from June to December, with a short interval in September. The valleys are adapted to horse- and sheep-breeding. The soil is fertile and produces rubber, cotton, sugar, coffee, cocoa, tobacco and nutmegs, all exported; pimento (allspice) grows wild. The island is divided into seven parishes. Scarborough, the capital, on the S. coast 8 m. from its S.W.
point, stands at the foot of a hill 425 ft. high, on which was situated Fort King George. There is a lighthouse at Baedlet Point. Tobago, properly Tobaco, was discovered in 1498 by Columbus, who named it Assumption, and the British flag was first planted in 1580. It afterwards passed into the hands of the Dutch and then of the French, and was finally ceded to the British in 1814. It formed part of the colony of the Windward Islands until 1889 when it was joined to Trinidad, its legal and fiscal arrangements, however, being kept distinct. Ten years later it was made one of the wards of Trinidad, under a warden and mag istrate; its revenue, expenditure and debt were merged into those of the united colony, and Trinidad laws, with some few exceptions, were made binding in Tobago.
See Aspinall, Handbook of the West Indies; Colonial Office List.