m,[5]
they have introduced a few thousand Coolies under indentures for five
years. These Asiatic importations are very happy in Trinidad; they save
money, and many of them do not return home when their time is out, but
stay where they are, buy land, or go into trade. They are proud,
however, and will not intermarry with the Africans. Few bring their
families with them; and women being scanty among them, there arise
inconveniences and sometimes serious crimes.

It were to be wished that there was more prospect of the Coolie race
becoming permanent than I fear there is. They work excellently. They are
picturesque additions to the landscape, as they keep to the bright
colours and graceful drapery of India. The grave dignity of their faces
contrasts remarkably with the broad, good-humoured, but common features
of the African. The black women look with envy at the straight hair of
Asia, and twist their unhappy wool into knots and ropes in the vain hope
of being mistaken for the purer race; but this is all. The African and
the Asiatic will not mix, and the African being the stronger will and
must prevail in Trinidad as elsewhere in the West Indies. Out of a total
population of 170,000, there are 25,000 whites and mulattoes, 10,000
coolies, the rest negroes. The English part of the Europeans shows no
tendency to increase. The English come as birds of passage, and depart
when they have made their fortunes. The French and Spaniards may hold on
to Trinidad as a home. Our people do not make homes there, and must be
looked on as a transient element.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] The negroes in the interior are beginning to cultivate sugar cane in
small patches, with common mills to break it up. If the experiment
succeeds it may extend.

CHAPTER VII.

A Coolie village--Negro
freeholds--Waterworks--Pythons--Slavery--Evidence of Lord
Rodney--Future of the negroes--Necessity of English rule--The Blue
Basin--Black boy and cray fish.

The second morning after my arrival, my host took me to a Coolie village
three miles beyond the town. The drive was between spreading cane
fields, beneath the shade of bamboos, or under rows of cocoa-nut palms,
between the stems of which the sea was gleaming.

Human dwelling places are rarely interesting in the tropics. A roof
which will keep the rain out is all that is needed. The more free the
passage given to the air under the floor and through the side, the more
healthy the habitati