g with political equality. The blacks disliked the mulattoes;
the mulattoes despised the blacks, and would not intermarry with them.
The impression was that the mulatto would die out, that the tendency of
the whites and blacks was to a constantly sharpening separation, and
that if things went on as they were going for another generation, it was
easy to see which of the two colours would then be in the ascendant. The
blacks were growing saucy, too; with much else of the same kind. I could
but listen and wait to judge for myself.

Meanwhile my quarters were unexceptionable, my kind entertainers leaving
nothing undone to make my stay with them agreeable. In hot climates one
sleeps lightly; but light sleep is all that one wants, and one wakes
early. The swimming bath was waiting for me underneath my window. After
a plunge in the clear cold water came coffee, grown and dried and
roasted on the spot, and 'made' as such coffee ought to be. Then came
the early walk. One missed the tropical luxuriance of Trinidad and
Dominica, for the winter months in Jamaica are almost rainless; but it
would have been beautiful anywhere else, and the mango trees were in
their glory. There was a corner given to orchids, which were hung in
baskets and just coming into flower. Lizards swarmed in the sunshine,
running up the tree trunks, or basking on the garden seats. Snakes there
are none; the mongoose has cleared them all away so completely that
there is nothing left for him to eat but the poultry, in which he makes
havoc, and, having been introduced to exterminate the vermin, has become
a vermin himself.

To drive, to ride, to visit was the employment of the days. I saw the
country. I saw what people were doing, and heard what they had to say.

The details are mostly only worth forgetting. The senior aide-de-camp,
Captain C----, an officer in the Artillery, was a man of ability and
observation. He, too, like the Colonel, was mainly interested in his
profession, to which he was anxious to return; but he was watching, too,
with serious interest the waning fortunes of the West Indies. He
superintended the social part of the governor's business to perfection.
Anything which I wished for had only to be mentioned to be provided. He
gave me the benefit, though less often than I could have wished, of his
shrewd, and not ungenial, observations. He drove me one morning into
Kingston. I had passed through it hastily on the day of my landing.
There were