ools attract them, and they are seen
occasionally coiled among the branches of the bamboos. Some washerwomen
at work in the stream had been disturbed a few days before our visit by
one of these monsters, who had come down to see what they were about.
They are harmless, but trying to the nerves. One of the men about the
place shot this one, and he told me that he had shot another a short
time before asleep in a tree. The keeper of the works was a retired
soldier, an Irish-Scot from Limerick, hale, vigorous, and happy as the
blacks themselves. He had married one of them--a remarkable exception to
an almost universal rule. He did not introduce us, but the dark lady
passed by us in gorgeous costume, just noticing our presence with a
sweep which would have done credit to a duchess.

We made several similar small expeditions into the settled parts of the
neighbourhood, seeing always (whatever else we saw) the boundless
happiness of the black race. Under the rule of England in these islands
the two million of these poor brothers-in-law of ours are the most
perfectly contented specimens of the human race to be found upon the
planet. Even Schopenhauer, could he have known them, would have admitted
that there were some of us who were not hopelessly wretched. If
happiness be the satisfaction of every conscious desire, theirs is a
condition which admits of no improvement: were they independent, they
might quarrel among themselves, and the weaker become the bondmen of the
stronger; under the beneficent despotism of the English Government,
which knows no difference of colour and permits no oppression, they can
sleep, lounge, and laugh away their lives as they please, fearing no
danger. If they want money, work and wages are waiting for them. No one
can say what may be before them hereafter. The powers which envy human
beings too perfect felicity may find ways one day of disturbing the West
Indian negro; but so long as the English rule continues, he may be
assured of the same tranquil existence.

As life goes he has been a lucky mortal. He was taken away from Dahomey
and Ashantee--to be a slave indeed, but a slave to a less cruel master
than he would have found at home. He had a bad time of it occasionally,
and the plantation whip and the branding irons are not all dreams, yet
his owner cared for him at least as much as he cared for his cows and
his horses. Kind usage to animals is more economical than barbarity,
and Englishmen in th