Negresses, I am sorry to say, forgot themselves, kicked up their legs, shouted to the bystanders, and were altogether incondite.  The Hindoo women, though showing much more of their limbs than the Negresses, kept them gracefully together, drew their veils round their heads, and sat coyly, half frightened, half amused, to the delight of their papas, or husbands, who had in some cases to urge them to get up and ride, while they stood by, as on guard, with the long hardwood quarter staff in hand.

As I looked on, considered what a strange creature man is, and wondered what possible pleasure these women could derive from being whirled round till they were giddy and stupid, I saw an old gentleman seemingly absorbed in the very same reflection.  He was dressed in dark blue, with a straw hat.  He stood with his hands behind his back, his knees a little bent, and a sort of wise, half-sad, half-humorous smile upon his aquiline high-cheek-boned features.  I took him for an old Scot; a canny, austere man—­a man, too, who had known sorrow, and profited thereby; and I drew near to him.  But as he turned his head deliberately round to me, I beheld to my astonishment the unmistakable features of a Chinese.  He and I looked each other full in the face, without a word; and I fancied that we understood each other about the merry-go-round, and many things besides.  And then we both walked off different ways, as having seen enough, and more than enough.  Was he, after all, an honest man and true?  Or had he, like Ah Sin, in Mr. Bret Harte’s delectable ballad, with ’the smile that was child-like and bland’—­

’In his sleeves, which were large,
   Twenty-four packs of cards,
And—­On his nails, which were taper,
   What’s common in tapers—­that’s wax’?

I know not; for the Chinese visage is unfathomable.  But I incline to this day to the more charitable judgment; for the man’s face haunted me, and haunts me still; and I am weak enough to believe that I should know the man and like him, if I met him in another planet, a thousand years hence.

Then I walked back under the blazing sun across the Savanna, over the sensitive plants and the mole-crickets’ nests, while the great locusts whirred up before me at every step; toward the archway between the bamboo-clumps, and the red sentry shining like a spark of fire beneath its deep shadow; and found on my way a dying racehorse, with a group of coloured men round him, whom I advised in vain to do the one thing needful—­put a blanket over him to keep off the sun, for the poor thing had fallen from sunstroke; so I left them to jabber and do nothing:  asking myself—­Is the human race, in the matter of amusements, as civilised as it was—­say three thousand years ago?  People have, certainly—­quite of late years—­given up going to see cocks fight, or heretics burnt:  but that is mainly because the heretics just now make the laws—­in