Very interesting was the first glimpse of Hindoos; and still more of Hindoos in the West Indies—­the surplus of one of the oldest civilisations of the old world, come hither to replenish the new; novel was the sight of the dusky limbs swarming up and down among the rocks beneath the Matapalo shade; the group in the water as we landed, bathing and dressing themselves at the same time, after the modest and graceful Hindoo fashion; the visit to the wooden barracks, where a row of men was ranged on one side of the room, with their women and children on the other, having their name, caste, native village, and so forth, taken down before they were sent off to the estates to which they were indentured.  Three things were noteworthy; first, the healthy cheerful look of all, speaking well for the care and good feeding which they had had on board ship; next, the great variety in their faces and complexions.  Almost all of them were low-caste people.  Indeed few high-caste Hindoos, except some Sepoys who found it prudent to emigrate after the rebellion, have condescended, or dared, to cross the ‘dark water’; and only a very few of those who come west are Mussulmans.  But among the multitude of inferior castes who do come there is a greater variety of feature and shape of skull than in an average multitude, as far as I have seen, of any European nation.  Caste, the physiognomist soon sees, began in a natural fact.  It meant difference, not of rank, but of tribe and language; and India is not, as we are apt to fancy, a nation:  it is a world.  One must therefore regard this emigration of the Coolies, like anything else which tends to break down caste, as a probable step forward in their civilisation.  For it must tend to undermine in them, and still more in their children, the petty superstitions of old tribal distinctions; and must force them to take their stand on wider and sounder ground, and see that ‘a man’s a man for a’ that.’

The third thing noteworthy in the crowd which cooked, chatted, lounged, sauntered idly to and fro under the Matapalos—­the pillared air-roots of which must have put them in mind of their own Banyans at home—­was their good manners.  One saw in a moment that one was among gentlemen and ladies.  The dress of many of the men was nought but a scarf wrapped round the loins; that of most of the women nought but the longer scarf which the Hindoo woman contrives to arrange in a most graceful, as well as a perfectly modest covering, even for her feet and head.  These garments, and perhaps a brass pot, were probably all the worldly goods of most of them just then.  But every attitude, gesture, tone, was full of grace; of ease, courtesy, self-restraint, dignity—­of that ‘sweetness and light,’ at least in externals, which Mr. Matthew Arnold desiderates.  I am well aware that these people are not perfect; that, like most heathen folk and some Christian, their morals are by no means spotless, their passions by no means