Doubtless, there are great excuses for the inmates.  A house in this climate is only needed for a sleeping or lounging place.  The cooking is carried on between a few stones in the garden; the washing at the neighbouring brook.  No store rooms are needed, where there is no winter, and everything grows fresh and fresh, save the salt-fish, which can be easily kept—­and I understand usually is kept—­underneath the bed.  As for separate bedrooms for boys and girls, and all those decencies and moralities for which those who build model cottages strive, and with good cause—­of such things none dream.  But it is not so very long ago that the British Isles were not perfect in such matters; some think that they are not quite perfect yet.  So we will take the beam out of our own eye, before we try to take the mote from the Negro’s.  The latter, however, no man can do.  For the Negro, being a freeholder and the owner of his own cottage, must take the mote out of his own eye, having no landlord to build cottages for him; in the meanwhile, however, the less said about his lodging the better.

In the villages, however, in Maraval, for instance, you see houses of a far better stamp, belonging, I believe, to coloured people employed in trades; long and low wooden buildings with jalousies instead of windows—­for no glass is needed here; divided into rooms, and smart with paint, which is not as pretty as the native wood.  You catch sight as you pass of prints, usually devotional, on the walls, comfortable furniture, looking-glasses, and sideboards, and other pleasant signs that a civilisation of the middle classes is springing up; and springing, to judge from the number of new houses building everywhere, very rapidly, as befits a colony whose revenue has risen, since 1855, from 72,300 pounds to 240,000 pounds, beside the local taxation of the wards, some 30,000 pounds or 40,000 pounds more.

What will be the future of agriculture in the West Indian colonies I of course dare not guess.  The profits of sugar-growing, in spite of all drawbacks, have been of late very great.  They will be greater still under the improved methods of manufacture which will be employed now that the sugar duties have been at least rationally reformed by Mr. Lowe.  And therefore, for some time to come, capital will naturally flow towards sugar-planting; and great sheets of the forest will be, too probably, ruthlessly and wastefully swept away to make room for canes.  And yet one must ask, regretfully, are there no other cultures save that of cane which will yield a fair, even an ample, return, to men of small capital and energetic habits?  What of the culture of bamboo for paper-fibre, of which I have spoken already?  It has been, I understand, taken up successfully in Jamaica, to supply the United States’ paper market.  Why should it not be taken up in Trinidad?  Why should not Plantain-meal {318a} be hereafter