nd managers of sugar-estates, that the
settling of free Indian immigrants would materially affect the
labour supply of the colony. I must express an earnest hope that
neither will any planters be short-sighted enough to urge such a
theory on the present Governor, nor will the present Governor give
ear to it. The colony at large must gain by the settlement of Crown
lands by civilised people like the Hindoos, if it be only through
the increased exports and imports; while the sugar-estates will
become more and more sure of a constant supply of labour, without
the heavy expense of importing fresh immigrants. I am assured that
the only expense to the colony is the fee for survey, amounting to
eighteen dollars for a ten-acre allotment, as the Coolie prefers the
thinly-wooded and comparatively poor lands, from the greater
facility of clearing them; and these lands are quite unsaleable to
other customers. Therefore, for less than 4 pounds, an acclimatised
Indian labourer with his family (and it must be remembered that,
while the Negro families increase very slowly, the Coolies increase
very rapidly, being more kind and careful parents) are permanently
settled in the colony, the man to work five days a week on sugar-
estates, the family to grow provisions for the market, instead of
being shipped back to India at a cost, including gratuities and
etceteras, of not less than 50 pounds.

One clearing we reached--were I five-and-twenty I should like to
make just such another next to it--of a higher class still. A
cultivated Scotchman, now no longer young, but hale and mighty, had
taken up three hundred acres, and already cleared a hundred and
fifty; and there he intended to pass the rest of a busy life, not
under his own vine and fig-tree, but under his own castor-oil and
cacao-tree. We were welcomed by as noble a Scot's face as I ever
saw, and as keen a Scot's eye; and taken in and fed, horses and men,
even too sumptuously, in a palm and timber house. Then we wandered
out to see the site of his intended mansion, with the rich wooded
hills of the Latagual to the north, and all around the unbroken
forest, where, he told us, the howling monkeys shouted defiance
morning and evening at him who did

'Invade their ancient solitary reign.'

Then we went down to see the Coolie barracks, where the folk seemed
as happy and well cared for as they were certain to be under such a
master; then down