After six hours' travelling through the night, the first light of dawn revealed to us the little shacks of thatch in which these refugees from civilisation house. These huts were aligned, somewhat irregularly, it is true, and embowered in shrubbery, along the bank of a mountain stream, which, a few yards farther on, suddenly ended its musical course through the rock barriers, and, with a wild cry of freedom, sprang into the ocean that lay so still fifty feet below.

For a moment we thought we had come too late, and that the secluded camp was deserted. Not a soul was stirring; still we remained concealed in the shrubbery, and at last our patience was rewarded. One by one, and without a word to each other, several young men came out of the silent huts, slipped down the mountain-side, and plunged into the ocean. For a few moments, like porpoises, and quite as silent in their play, they plunged and gambolled about, and then, with great overarm strokes, came swimming back to the shore. Other forms were stirring now in and about the strawhuts, and when the bathers seated themselves upon the rocks which dotted the strand, their women came down to them with strange guttural cries, and gave them their morning smokes of loosely-rolled tobacco-leaves. Then, slowly and lovingly, they streaked and smeared the still dripping bodies of the returned swimmers with a yellow ochre chalk or paint. A moment later the young men were gone, darting out through the breakers in their canoes, with the wonderful watermanship which is their still unimpaired inheritance from the fifteenth-century Caribs, who astonished Columbus and the early navigators with their aquatic exploits.

You say, when you have seen the Kanakas of the

South Seas or the surf-boys of West Africa, plying their trade: "What a mastery over their craft these men possess!" With the Kanakas and the Kroo boys their mastery of their boats is marvellous and undeniable. But here, with the Carib, the born waterman, his craft would seem harmoniously blended with his body, and the prow answers to his impulses as does an arm or a leg to the nerve centres of a well-trained athlete, with every member well in hand.

With the young men gone, and the young women, all of whom were straight of form, lithe, and comely, retired to their huts and household duties, the little village of Salybia was a dreary enough place, and we began to sigh even for such civilisation as Roseau unfolds, and more, even, for the wild beauty of the mountain passes through which we had groped our way in the darkness. When we came out of hiding, we were personally conducted about the village by the King, who, we understood, had achieved this proud position, not by birth, but by reason of seniority. He was a dried-up little man, who had evidently attained a very great age, and he showed more signs of the negroid admixture than any of his subjects. We were not invited to enter any of the thatched huts, but, as far as we could see from the outside, they differed in no wise from the usual habitations of the negro islanders. Once a party of the distant fishermen came spinning over the sea towards the landing-beach. They had evidently caught sight of us, and were alarmed or, perhaps, merely curious. As they sent their boats through the water, propelled at a tremendous speed through the now rising surf, the sun was mirrored on their slight, but wonderfully proportioned bodies. In

the sunlight, at least, their skins took on a golden bronze hue, the like of which I have never seen among any other of the copper-coloured races.

But as they drew nearer, doubtless seeing us tranquilly engaged in bartering with their King man for limes and for several of the wonderfully woven baskets for which these Caribs are famous, the fishing braves put their boats about and went back again, singing as they went to the warm sun banks, where the great sea fish they sought love to warm themselves. As they rowed they sang a song we did not understand, but certainly the cadence was exceedingly mournful. Our negro guide, however, who did not seek to conceal the disdain in which he held the shiftless Caribs, natural, perhaps, in a man who had served his King in the West India regiment, and hoped to become an insular constable some day, translated it as follows:

"In olden times we were men and ate our enemies, Now we are women and only eat Cassava cakes."

Our barter with the King for baskets proved the entering-wedge of commercialism. The monarch relaxed, and there were symptoms of approaching talk about old shoes and other worn-out baubles of our artificial civilisation. So, as the sun began to climb towards its zenith, and flood the dark mountain paths with its light and warmth, we left the Carib reservation.

It was an interesting experience, and one which I am not likely to forget, and can only recommend the little journey as being worth the trouble to those who come this way. We certainly had the feeling, or illu

sion, if you will, that we had seen the aboriginal West Indians much as Columbus presented them to the astonished gaze of the Catholic Kings. The Caribs of Dominica may not be absolutely pure in blood, though this virtue is claimed for many of them by several distinguished authorities living on the island. Even to the untrained eye of the unscientific observer these men, or the majority of them, show a cranial formation and a colour of skin that betrays a to us new ethnological type. The resplendent colour of their skins, especially when wet from their morning swim, and standing in the sunlight, is the impression that will always remain with me. Altogether, they were in their ways and in their appearance of their own kind, and that is a kind quite different from their cousins, the black Caribs of Ruatan, off the Central American coast, from the Arawaks of Guiana, or the numberless tribes of copper-coloured men who disport themselves in and out of the waters of Malaysia.

CHAPTER XIII

ORPHANS OF THE CONQUEST (continued)

IN grouping the larger and more civilised islands of the British West Indies* with the other orphans of the conquest, as I have found it convenient to do, I feel called upon to say that, while the economic conditions in all the islands are much the same, the political and educational standards are as far apart as the poles. There can be no comparison between the average Guadeloupian, the Saint Thomas "boys" of the King of Denmark, and the loyal black subjects of the British Crown resident in the West Indies. The British blacks show in their way of living and their general deportment and intelligence that the efforts which have been made for generations to improve their social efficiency have not been made in vain. For many years past an education of a high order has been within the reach of the Jamaican and Barbadian blacks, and many thousands of them have availed themselves to the fullest extent of their opportunities. If there are anywhere in the world coloured men ripe for self-government, they are to be found in Barbados and Jamaica. For generations past high offices in these islands have been open to the deserving, irrespective of colour, and during this period at least one negro rose to be Chief

*Trade returns and other statistics concerning the British islands are given in Appendix G, Notes I and II, pages 447-448.