knows how to make the best of it.

She has a natural skill in dress, and will be seen with a boddice fitted to her as though it had been made and laced in Paris. Their costumes on fête days and Sundays are perfectly marvellous. They are by no means contented with coloured calicoes; but shine in muslin and light silks at heaven only knows how much a yard. They wear their dresses of an enormous fulness. One may see of a Sunday evening three ladies occupying a whole street by the breadth of their garments, who on the preceding day were scrubbing pots and carrying weights about the town on their heads. And they will walk in full-dress too as though they had been used to go in such attire from their youth up. They rejoice most in white-in white muslin with coloured sashes; in light-brown boots, pink gloves, parasols, and broad-brimmed straw hats with deep veils and glittering bugles. The hat and the veil, however, are mistakes. If the negro woman thoroughly understood effect, she would wear no head dress but the coloured handkerchief, which is hers by right of national custom.

Some of their efforts after dignity of costume are ineffably ludicrous. One Sunday evening, far away in the country, as I was riding with a gentleman, the proprietor of the estate around us, I saw a young girl walking home from church. She was arrayed from head to foot in virgin white. Her gloves were on, and her parasol was up. Her hat also was white, and so was the lace, and so were the bugles which adorned it. She walked with a stately dignity that was worthy of such a costume, and worthy also of higher grandeur; for behind her walked an attendant nymph, carrying the beauty's prayer-bookon her head. A negro woman carries every burden on her head, from a tub of water weighing a hundredweight down to a bottle of physic.

When we came up to her, she turned towards us and curtsied. She curtsied, for she recognized her 'massa;' but she curtsied with great dignity, for she recognized also her own finery. The girl behind with the prayerbook made the ordinary obeisance, crooking her leg up at the knee, and then standing upright quicker than thought.

"Who on earth is that princess?" said I.

"They are two sisters who both work at my mill," said my friend. "Next Sunday they will change places. Polly will have the parasol and the hat, and Jenny will carry the prayer-book on her head behind her."

I was in a shoemaker's shop at St. Thomas, buying a pair of boots, when a negro entered quickly and in a loud voice said he wanted a pair of pumps. He was a labouring man fresh from his labour. He had on an old hat what in Ireland men would call a caubeen; he was in his shirt-sleeves, and was barefooted. As the only shopman was looking for my boots, he was not attended to at the moment.

"Want a pair of pumps-directerly," he roared out in a very dictatorial voice.

"Sit down for a moment," said the shopman, "and I will attend to you."

He did sit down, but did so in the oddest fashion. He dropped himself suddenly into a chair, and at the same moment rapidly raised his legs from the ground; and as he did so fastened his hands across them just below his knees, so as to keep his feet suspended from his arms. This he contrived to do in such a manner that the moment his body reached the chair his feet left the ground. I looked on in amazement, thinking he was mad.

"Give I a bit of carpet," he screamed out; still holding up his feet, but with much difficulty.

66

Yes, yes," said the shopman, still searching for the boots.

"Give I a bit of carpet directerly," he again exclaimed. The seat of the chair was very narrow, and the back was s raight, and the position was not easy, as my reader will ascertain if he attempt it. He was halfchoked with anger and discomfort.

The shopman gave him the bit of carpet. Most men and women will remember that such bits of carpet are common in shoemakers' shops. believe, in order that they who soil their stockings on the floor.

They are supplied, I are delicate should not

The gentleman in search of the pumps had seen that people of dignity were supplied with such luxuries, and resolved to have his value for his money; but as he had on neither shoes nor stockings, the little bit of carpet was hardly necessary for his material comfort.

CHAPTER V.

JAMAICA-COLOURED MEN.

If in speaking of the negroes I have been in danger of offending my friends at home, I shall be certain in speaking of the coloured men to offend my friends in Jamaica. On this subject, though I have sympathy with them, I have no agreement. They look on themselves as the ascendant race. I look upon those of colour as being so, or at any rate as about to become so.

In speaking of my friends in Jamaica, it is not unnatural that I should allude to the pure-blooded Europeans, or European Creoles-to those in whose veins there is no admixture of African blood. "Similia similibus." A man from choice will live with those who are of his own habits and his own way of thinking. But as regards Jamaica, I believe that the light of their star is waning, that their ascendency is over-in short, that their work, if not done, is on the decline.

Ascendency is a disagreeable word to apply to any two different races whose fate it may be to live together in the same land. It has been felt to be so in Ireland, when used either with reference to the Saxon Protestant or Celtic Roman Catholic; and it is so with reference to those of various shades of colour in

Jamaica. When two rivers come together, the waters of which do not mix, the one stream will be the stronger-will overpower the other-will become ascendant. And so it is with people and nations. It may not be pretty-spoken to talk about ascendency; but sometimes pretty speaking will not answer a man's

But nevertheless it is the true word.

purpose.

It is almost unnecessary to explain that by coloured men I mean those who are of a mixed race of a breed mixed, be it in what proportion it may, between the white European and the black African. Speaking of Jamaica, I might almost say between the Anglo-Saxon and the African; for there remains, I take it, but a small tinge of Spanish blood. Of the old Indian blood there is, I imagine, hardly a vestige.

Both the white men and the black dislike their coloured neighbours. It is useless to deny that as a rule such is the case. The white men now, at this very day, dislike them more in Jamaica than they do in other parts of the West Indies, because they are constantly driven to meet them, and are more afraid of them.

In Jamaica one does come in contact with coloured men. They are to be met at the Governor's table; they sit in the House of Assembly; they cannot be refused admittance to state parties, or even to large assemblies; they have forced themselves forward, and must be recognized as being in the van. Individuals

decry them-will not have them within their doorsaffect to despise them. But in effect the coloured men of Jamaica cannot be despised much longer.

It will be said that we have been wrong if we have ever despised these coloured people, or indeed, if we have ever despised the negroes, or any other race. I can