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.

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