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dignified Mandingo, between the docile Fanti and the bloodthirsty
Ashanti, as there was one hundred and fifty years ago. Civilising
influences have made this contrast between the Africans and their West
India descendants still more striking. The latter have, since the
abolition of slavery, been living independent lives, in close contact
with civilisation, and enjoying all the rights of manhood under British
laws. From their earliest infancy they have known no language but the
English, and no religion but Christianity; while the former are still
barbarians, grovelling in fetishism, cursed with slavery, ignorant,
debased, and wantonly cruel. The West India negro has so much contempt
for his African cousin, that he invariably speaks of him by the
ignominious title of "bushman." In fact, the former considers himself in
every respect an Englishman, and the anecdote of the West India negro,
who, being rather roughly jolted by a Frenchman on board a mail steamer,
turned round to him and ejaculated, "I think you forget that we beat you
at Waterloo," is no exaggeration.

Just as the negro races of West Africa are distinct from one another,
and the West India negro from all, so are the coloured inhabitants of
both those parts of the world entirely distinct from the Kaffir tribes
of South Africa; and a coalition between Galeka or Zulu inhabitants and
West India troops would be as impossible as the fraternisation of a
Territorial battalion with the natives of India. Apart, however, from
the fact that negro troops could always be safely employed alone outside
the colony in which they were bred, history has shown that the fidelity
of West India soldiers is beyond question. Indeed it would be difficult
to say what stronger ties there could be than those of sentiment,
language, and religion, and the association from childhood with British
manners, customs, laws, and modes of thought. When to these are added
discipline, the habit of obedience, and that well-known affection for
their officers and their regiment which is so particularly an attribute
of the West India soldier, it must be acknowledged that the guarantees
of fidelity are, with the single exception of race, at least as good as
those of the linesmen.

In India, the native army consists of men hostile to us by tradition,
creed, and race, who consider their food defiled if even the shadow of a
British officer should chance to fall across it, and assuredly it would
be as saf