After he has served his five years’ apprenticeship, the Coolie has two courses before him.  Either he can re-indenture himself to an employer, for not more than twelve months, which as a rule he does; or he can seek employment where he likes.  At the end of a continuous residence of ten years in all, and at any period after that, he is entitled to a free passage back to Hindostan; or he may exchange his right to a free passage for a Government grant of ten acres of land.  He has meanwhile, if he has been thrifty, grown rich.  His wife walks about, at least on high-days, bedizened with jewels:  nay, you may see her, even on work-days, hoeing in the cane-piece with heavy silver bangles hanging down over her little brown feet:  and what wealth she does not carry on her arms, ankles, neck, and nostril, her husband has in the savings’ bank.  The ship Arima, as an instance,:  took back 320 Coolies last year, of whom seven died on the voyage.  These people carried with them 65,585 dollars; and one man, Heerah, handed over 6000 dollars for transmission through the Treasury, and was known to have about him 4000 more.  This man, originally allotted to an estate, had, after serving out his industrial contract, resided in the neighbouring village of Savannah Grande as a shopkeeper and money-lender for the last ten years.  Most of this money, doubtless, had been squeezed out of other Coolies by means not unknown to Europeans, as well as to Hindoos:  but it must have been there to be squeezed out.  And the new ‘feeding ordinance’ will, it is to be hoped, pare the claws of Hindoo and Chinese usurers.

The newly offered grant of Government land has, as yet, been accepted only in a few cases.  ‘It was not to be expected,’ says the report, ’that the Indian, whose habits have been fixed in special grooves for tens of centuries, should hurriedly embrace an offer which must strike at all his prejudices of country, and creed, and kin.’  Still, about sixty had settled in 1869 near the estates in Savonetta, where I saw them, and at Point a Pierre; other settlements have been made since, of which more hereafter.  And, as a significant fact, many Coolies who have returned to India are now coming back a second time to Trinidad, bringing their kinsfolk and fellow-villagers with them, to a land where violence is unknown, and famine impossible.  Moreover, numerous Coolies from the French Islands are now immigrating, and buying land.  These are chiefly Madrassees, who are, it is said, stronger and healthier than the Calcutta Coolies.  In any case, there seems good hope that a race of Hindoo peasant-proprietors will spring up in the colony, whose voluntary labour will be available at crop-time; and who will teach the Negro thrift and industry, not only by their example, but by competing against him in the till lately understocked labour-market.