ceremony was the distributing by the Governor of red and yellow sweetmeats to the children out of a huge dish held up by the Hindoo butler, while Franky, in a long night-shirt of crimson cotton velvet, acted as aide-de-camp, and took his perquisites freely.  Each of the little brown darlings got its share, the boys putting them into the flap of their waistcloths, the girls into the front of their veils; and some of the married women seemed ready enough to follow the children’s example; some of them, indeed, were little more than children themselves.  The pleasure of the men at the whole ceremony was very noticeable, and very pleasant.  Well fed, well cared for, well taught (when they will allow themselves to be so), and with a local medical man appointed for their special benefit, Coolies under such a master ought to be, and are, prosperous and happy.  Exceptions there are, and must be.  Are there none among the workmen of English manufacturers and farmers?  Abuses may spring up, and do.  Do none spring up in London and elsewhere?  But the Government has the power to interfere, and uses that power.  These poor people are sufficiently protected by law from their white employers; what they need most is protection for the newcomers against the usury, or swindling, by people of their own race, especially Hindoos of the middle class, who are covetous and ill-disposed, and who use their experience of the island for their own selfish advantage.  But that evil also Government is doing its best to put down.  Already the Coolies have a far larger amount of money in the savings’ banks of the island than the Negroes; and their prosperity can be safely trusted to wise and benevolent laws, enforced by men who can afford to stand above public opinion, as well as above private interest.  I speak, of course, only of Trinidad, because only Trinidad I have seen.  But what I say I know intimately to be true.

The parade over—­and a pleasant sight it was, and one not easily to be forgotten—­we were away to see the Salse, or ‘mud-volcano,’ near Monkey Town, in the forest to the south-east.  The cross-roads were deep in mud, all the worse because it was beginning to dry on the surface, forming a tough crust above the hasty-pudding which, if broken through, held the horse’s leg suspended as in a vice, and would have thrown him down, if it were possible to throw down a West-Indian horse.  We passed in one place a quaint little relic of the older world; a small sugar-press, rather than mill, under a roof of palm-leaf, which was worked by hand, or a donkey, just as a Spanish settler would have worked it three hundred years ago.  Then on through plenty of garden cultivation, with all the people at their doors as we passed, fat and grinning:  then up to a good high-road, and a school for Coolies, kept by a Presbyterian clergyman, Mr. Morton—­I must be allowed to mention his name—­who, like a sensible man, wore a white coat instead of