laid down for himself at starting, and failing
which no trustworthy data could have been obtained concerning the
character and disposition of the people about whom he undertakes to
thoroughly enlighten his readers. Speaking of St. Vincent, where he
arrived immediately after leaving Barbados, our author says:--

[47] "I did not land, for the time was short, and as a beautiful
picture the island was best seen from the deck. The characteristics of
the people are the same in all the Antilles, and could be studied
elsewhere."

Now, it is a fact, patent and notorious, that "the characteristics of
the people are" not "the same in all the Antilles." A man of Mr.
Froude's attainments, whose studies have made him familiar with
ethnological facts, must be aware that difference of local surroundings
and influences does, in the course of time, inevitably create
difference of characteristic and deportment. Hence there is in nearly
every Colony a marked dissimilarity of native qualities amongst the
Negro inhabitants, arising not only from the causes above indicated,
but largely also from the great diversity of their African ancestry.
We might as well be told that because the nations of Europe are
generally white and descended from Japhet, they could be studied one by
the light derived from acquaintance with another. We venture to
declare that, unless a common education from youth has been shared by
them, the Hamitic inhabitants of one island have very little in common
with [48] those of another, beyond the dusky skin and woolly hair. In
speech, character, and deportment, a coloured native of Trinidad
differs as much from one of Barbados as a North American black does
from either, in all the above respects.

BOOK I: GRENADA

[48] In Grenada, the next island he arrived at, our traveller's
procedure with regard to the inhabitants was very similar. There he
landed in the afternoon, drove three or four miles inland to dine at
the house of a "gentleman who was a passing resident," returned in the
dark to his ship, and started for Trinidad. In the course of this
journey back, however, as he sped along in the carriage, Mr. Froude
found opportunity to look into the people's houses along the way,
where, he tells us, he "could see and was astonished to observe signs
of comfort, and even signs of taste--armchairs, sofas, side-boards with
cut-glass upon them, engravings and coloured prints upon the walls."
As a result of this noct