ing them in
exactly the same way, as three out of four white persons?

But if the night was disturbed, pleasant was the waking next
morning; pleasant the surprise at finding that the whistling and
howling air-bath of the night had not given one a severe cold, or
any cold at all; pleasant to slip on flannel shut and trousers--
shoes and stockings were needless--and hurry down through a stampede
of kicking, squealing mules, who were being watered ere their day's
work began, under the palms to the sea; pleasant to bathe in warm
surf, into which the four-eyes squattered in shoals as one ran down,
and the moment they saw one safe in the water, ran up with the next
wave to lie staring at the sky; pleasant to sit and read one's book
upon a log, and listen to the soft rush of the breeze in the palm-
leaves, and look at a sunrise of green and gold, pink and orange,
and away over the great ocean, and to recollect, with a feeling of
mingled nearness and loneliness, that there was nothing save that
watery void between oneself and England, and all that England held;
and then, when driven in to breakfast by the morning shower, to
begin a new day of seeing, and seeing, and seeing, certain that one
would learn more in it than in a whole week of book-reading at home.

We spent the next morning in inspecting the works. We watched the
Negroes splitting the coconuts with a single blow of that all-useful
cutlass, which they handle with surprising dexterity and force,
throwing the thick husk on one side, the fruit on the other. We saw
the husk carded out by machinery into its component fibres, for
coco-rope matting, coir-rope, saddle-stuffing, brushes, and a dozen
other uses; while the fruit was crushed down for the sake of its
oil; and could but wish all success to an industry which would be
most profitable, both to the projectors and to the island itself,
were it not for the uncertainty, rather than the scarcity, of
labour. Almost everything is done, of course, by piecework. The
Negro has the price of his labour almost at his own command; and
when, by working really hard and well for a while, he has earned a
little money, he throws up his job and goes off, careless whether
the whole works stand still or not. However, all prosperity to the
coco-works of Messrs. Uhrich and Gerold; and may the day soon come
when the English of Trinidad, like the Ceylonese and the Dutch of
Java, shall count by millions t