after they had been driven from surrounding islands, as European powers entered the region. In 1690, French woodcutters from Martinique and Guadeloupe begin to set up timber camps to supply the French islands with wood and gradually become permanent settlers. France had a colony for several years and imported slaves from West Africa, Martinique and Guadeloupe to work on its plantations. The Antillean Creole language developed. France formally ceded possession of Dominica to Great Britain in 1763. The latter established a small colony on the island in 1805. As a result, Dominica uses English as an official language, but Antillean Creole is still spoken as a secondary language because of Dominica's location between the French-speaking departments of Guadeloupe and Martinique. In Trinidad, the Spanish possessed the island but contributed little towards advancements, with El Dorado being their focus. Trinidad was perfect for its geographical location. Because Trinidad was considered underpopulated, Roume de St. Laurent, a Frenchman living in Grenada, was able to obtain a Cédula de Población from King Charles III of Spain on 4 November 1783. Trinidad's population jumped to over 15,000 by the end of 1789, from just under 1,400 in 1777. In 1797, Trinidad became a British crown colony, despite its French-speaking population. Origin of creole Lesser Antillean Creole began as the pidgin "baragouin" in 1635. It was spoken by French settlers, the Africans they enslaved, and Aboriginal peoples that resided on the islands. It originated in the Guadeloupe and Martinique areas of the Lesser Antilles. It was not until 1700, when there was an increase in African influences, that this pidgin transitioned into the creole that it is today. The formation of this creole was influenced by many different dialects and languages. These include dialects of French, other European languages, Carib (both Karina and Arawakan), and African languages. Due to the influences from its origins, this creole has some distinctive linguistic features. Features of French included in Lesser Antillean Creole include infinitive forms of verbs, the use of only the masculine noun forms, oblique pronouns, and its subject to verb word order. Features from African languages include their verbal marking system as well as providing a West-African substrate. Other features of this creole also include doubling to emphasize a sentence, the word "point" to inflect the negative, and the non-distinguished adverbs and adjectives. The language emerged in a context of plantation slavery in the French Antilles.