ive minutes that he is 'neider C'rab nor Creole, but true
Barbadian barn.' This self-conceit of his, meanwhile, is apt to
make him unruly, and the cause of unruliness in others when he
emigrates. The Barbadian Negroes are, I believe, the only ones who
give, or ever have given, any trouble in Trinidad; and in Barbadoes
itself, though the agricultural Negroes work hard and well, who that
knows the West Indies knows not the insubordination of the
Bridgetown boatmen, among whose hands a traveller and his luggage
are, it is said, likely enough to be pulled in pieces? However,
they are rather more quiet just now; for not a thousand years ago a
certain steamer's captain, utterly unable to clear his quarter of
the fleet of fighting, jabbering brown people, turned the steam pipe
on them. At which quite unexpected artillery they fled
precipitately; and have had some rational respect for a steamer's
quarter ever since. After all, I do not deny that this man's being
a Barbadian opened my heart to him at once, for old sakes' sake.

Another specimen of Negro character I was to have analysed, or tried
to analyse, at the estate where I had slept. M. F--- had lately
caught a black servant at the brook-side busily washing something in
a calabash, and asked him what was he doing there? The conversation
would have been held, of course, in French-Spanish-African--Creole
patois, a language which is becoming fixed, with its own grammar and
declensions, etc. A curious book on it has lately been published in
Trinidad by Mr. Thomas, a coloured gentleman, who seems to be at
once no mean philologer and no mean humorist. The substance of the
Negro's answer was, 'Why, sir, you sent me to the town to buy a
packet of sugar and a packet of salt; and coming back it rained so
hard, the packets burst, and the salt was all washed into the sugar.
And so--I am washing it out again.' . . .

This worthy was to have been brought to me, that I might discover,
if possible, by what processes of 'that which he was pleased to call
his mind' he had arrived at the conclusion that such a thing could
be done. Clearly, he could not plead unavoidable ignorance of the
subject-matter, as might the old cook at San Josef, who, the first
time her master brought home Wenham Lake ice from Port of Spain, was
scandalised at the dirtiness of the 'American water,' washed off the
sawdust, and dried the ice in the sun. His was a case of H