For the acquaintance—the friendship I think I may write now—of this young lady, I am indebted to my cook Malvina. We had left the Hyde and gone to live at Montego Bay, and the family wanted milk, wanted it rather badly, as Samuel Hyde Parsons, “young massa up at Hyde,” was but a small person and milk is a precious commodity in Montego Bay. Many people got it out of a tin. We did at first. And Malvina suggested—“Why not missus writing to Miss Maxwell Hall? Miss Maxwell Hall kindly supplying.”

I didn't know whether the lady would be “kindly supplying” or not, but I thought the offer of cash down might induce her to do so.

And my letter brought me a visit from a laughing girl in a motor, who said she did sell milk, rather to the horror of some of her relations who felt that the most she ought to do was to “oblige a few friends.” She, finding her milk going to waste, had advanced a step further and did not see why she should not oblige herself, and had set to work putting that milk-walk upon a business basis.

And there and then on the verandah looking out over the sea, we struck up a friendship based on my unbounded admiration for her and her work. Presently I was looking for a house without being able to find one that suited my needs, and she came to my rescue with an invitation to the three of us, myself, Eva and the baby, to go to Kempshot Pen.

And there I saw a side of life which gave me not only great hopes of Jamaica, but for all the tropical possessions of Britain. Here was a place run—by a woman, a young woman—and run frankly for gain and for the good of all the people surrounding it.

Charlotte Maxwell Hall is Jamaican born (of English parents) and she loves her home, and she is making a beginning of a new phase in that land. What she is doing to the surprise of her generation, the next generation will be keen on doing and they will regenerate Jamaica.

Not that there are not rich pens and well kept pens, but they are managed by men and they are much greater in extent.

Kempshot specially attracted me because it was run by a young woman of an age when many girls are thinking only of their amusement, run not only with the intention of getting every ounce of good out of the soil, but of putting back into that soil all the good that came out out of it. And the place where she earns her livelihood, the place where the slaves rose and ninety years ago drove Major Hall and his wife fleeing in the night down through the jungle for their very lives, bids fair to be a very jewel among homesteads, a model for all Jamaican homesteads. I only trust the loneliness of it will not drive her away. And then, of course, with a woman, and an attractive one, there is always the danger that some man may persuade her to marry him and he will carry her off.

Oh, but some of those ladies Madden talks about, “accustomed to all the refinements of English society,” would turn in their graves if they could see this their modern representative. She will be still in her youth when her years make her old enough to be the mother of the girls of his time. But then she arises long before dawn, she is riding or walking in boots and breeches, dogs at her heels, over the pen seeking with the eye of the master for defects as soon as the first glimmer of light comes over the mountains; she rests in the middle of the day, but her work is hardly done when the sun sinks gorgeously to rest behind the tree-topped hills in the west.

And she has her work cut out for her. For the negro, whether on her estate or, what is worse, on its borders, is intolerably wasteful of his property and other people's. For instance, she found on the land when it came into her hands two well-grown handsome trees which she discovered were mahogany trees. She hailed them with delight and gave them every attention. And then one day to her dismay she found her precious trees, trees nearly as old as herself, dying and past all hope, for some negro outside her boundaries had stripped the bark off them, because mahogany bark—and mahogany bark is difficult to get now in accessible places—makes the best floor stain! That is the sort of difficulty the man or woman who would do well by the country has to encounter in Jamaica. It takes the heart out of the worker. What was the good of storming and raging, the seventeen year old mahogany trees were dead, because a negro wanted to earn without trouble a few pence in Montego Bay. Again and again going the rounds, Miss Maxwell Hall finds that the black people have ruthlessly cut down trees she is cherishing, cut them down for firewood, or to make shingles, or for a riding-whip or some other trifle.

In my experience the negro peasant makes a very wasteful agriculturist. Sir Hugh Clifford I see, speaking of the countries from which the forbears of the coloured Jamaican came, advocates that white men be not encouraged to settle in these lands, that they be left to the peasants.

I see what he means. He deprecates the arrival of the white man, who comes as a bird of passage, anxious to take all he can out of the land before retiring after a certain number of years to enjoy his spoils—a well-earned, peaceful old age he would call it, an old age beginning somewhere about forty—in the country of his birth.

The countries that go to make up the Empire should not be so treated. But I cannot think that the peasant on the soil is best left alone to work out his own salvation. He will work it out I suppose in time, but the cost will be heavy. I have watched the peasant in the Alpes Maritimes in France, I have seen the fishermen drawing their nets in the Italian Riviera, and I have seen the negro in Jamaica and West Africa, and I unhesitatingly say that the cost of that working out is very heavy indeed.

The fishermen complained bitterly—there are no more fish, only the little young ones, but they went on fishing relentlessly, taking every one, destroying those that were so small they fell through the fine meshes of the net on to the beach.

“Oh, they take all,” said a man looking on who spoke a little French, and he laughed.

In Jamaica the peasant is a very wasteful, a ruinous agriculturist, the only thing he does not waste is his own health and energy. In West Africa the same accusation held good. The peasant ruthlessly burnt down the forest trees to make a place for his patch of food-stuffs, and when the land was worn out there he chose another spot and repeated the destruction. He does the same in Jamaica.

In France it is the other way. The country is carefully tilled. The hillsides that would be barren anywhere else are blooming gardens, but the working out bears cruelly on the individual, especially on the women. Look at the people, white people all, industrious, thrifty, admirable in many ways—and about as far advanced in civilisation as they were at the end of the eighteenth century! Their women are worn with toil, they are haggard and old, toothless crones, before they are thirty. All the joy and loveliness has gone out of their life. Up in the mountains they are devout enough, but they have no use for modern science, and as I saw them they are not as far advanced as many a negro I have met in Jamaica, even as the negroes are far behind the farmers of Australia and New Zealand.

Now I am sure that most people will agree with me that the capable business man—and in “man” I include the capable of both sexes—the man with modern knowledge and training, the farseeing man who will settle in a country and give it the best of his years, will educate and help the peasant to get the most out of the land and better his lot, who will bring up his children to follow in his footsteps, must be a boon in any land. The ignorant peasant wastes; in France his labour and strength in archaic methods of labour and life, in Jamaica and West Africa he wastes the timber, he wastes the animals he has under him, he wastes the soil, the earth brings forth not one-tenth of what it might under more enlightened rule.

And I need not say what that increase would mean, not only to the peasant but to a great manufacturing country like Great Britain.

When I read about Garden Cities in England, and the necessity for women emigrating, I am full of wonder why someone with a little money does not start an agricultural colony in Jamaica. I can see no reason why the beautiful land should become the exclusive property of the rich fleeing from the northern winter. It should be an ideal place for people who are not rich, especially for women. Here is eternal summer, here are beautiful surroundings, here is a fertile soil crying out for cultivation, here is a large peasant population waiting for employment, here is an ample fruit supply, here should be milk and eggs and chickens in abundance; here is no need of fires and furs, of winter clothing, of carpets and curtains, of heavy bedding.

If a woman go to Canada or Australia she must use her hands—it will do her no harm, but many women do not like the prospect—but in Jamaica for many a long day to come there will be labour in plenty crying out for a guiding hand. All it seems to me that is required to make such settlements a great success is a little money—you cannot have land and plan to work it for nothing anywhere—a little common sense, and they would be a boon not only to Jamaica but to the Empire. Only one thing, two things, perhaps, I would insist on. All the windows must be built as are those in the south of France and in Italy—like doors that open wide and let in an abundance of air, and not as they make them in Jamaica, sash fashion, after the custom of cold England. And no settler must live in a mosquito-proof room. He must clear away the mosquitoes.

They talk about the Jamaican negro as dishonest, but I think that is to be attributed to ignorance, and will mend with better wages and better education. My servants, low as were their wages, might have been trusted as a rule with my money or my jewellery or even my clothes, and they only pilfered the flour and sugar and such like commodities which, considering they fed themselves and these things were dear, was putting their sins on a par with that of the boy who steals sugar or apples; but there is a form of larceny in Jamaica which is very crippling to industry, and which I have not heard of in any other land. The Jamaican peasant cannot for the life of him help predial larceny, that is field larceny. He steals not only from the well-to-do man with a large acreage, but from his neighbour and his friend. Before the yams are ready for digging, or the corn ready to be cut, comes along the predial thief and relieves the owner of a large portion of his crop. Whenever any man plants he must put in enough to supply the greedy robber, who is too lazy to plant for himself. Everyone expects part of his crop to be taken. It is the curse of the country.

“Missus,” said a black boy to Miss Maxwell Hall, “you buy my corn when him ripe?”

“Have you any corn, Cyril?” He rejoiced in that high-sounding name.

“Got good big plot, missus. Him ripe soon.”

“Very well,” she said good-naturedly, anxious to help on the industrious, and passing over the fact that he had calmly taken her land without paying any rent. So the time went on and the fowls wanted food.

“Where's that corn, Cyril?”

“Oh, missus!” sighed Cyril, sad, but not surprised, “somebody tief him all.”

And his was the common lot.

Near one of the big towns there was a man who, having a crop of roots from which he expected great things, took the trouble to sit up and watch by night with a shot-gun in his hand. He concealed himself, of course, and in the uncertain light of the early morning he saw a big figure stooping over his precious roots, and, aiming low, let fly. The dark figure scuffled away promptly, and the owner of the land was satisfied, because when the daylight came he found blood on the ground.

“Now,” he said to himself, “when I hear some man got sick in de laigs den I know who tief my yams.”

For a day or two nothing happened, and then it began to be rumoured that a well-known man, a man in quite a decent position in the community, had a curious swelling in his legs.

“No can put foot to groun',” and the owner of the yams smiled.

The sick man went to the hospital at last, though he stood off as long as he could, and those inconsiderate doctors, instead of applying the proper remedies, insisted upon enquiring into the cause of the trouble, which he felt was no business of theirs.

“What were you doing?” asked the inquisitive leeches.

“Cuttin' bush,” said the patient ruefully, “an' me fall backwards into makra with bad thorn,” and further investigation revealed the fact that at the bottom of every makra thorn wound there was a large pellet such as would come out of a shot-gun!

But the patient insisted he had not been shot. He didn't want to be arrested for larceny! But everybody about the place then knew that this well-to-do man had paid a night visit to his poorer neighbour's yam patch!

What the remedy for this evil is going to be I don't know. Of course everyone must see the cause. The curse of slavery that hung over the land for 250 years destroys every shred of selfrespect. I put it to you, can a slave have any self-respect, a man who is not responsible for his own doings. He took everything he could get, honestly or dishonestly, he was fraudulently held himself, what did it matter to him whose property he took so long as he kept his back from the lash. And a standard of life that has been inculcated for so long is not likely to be altered in three generations, especially when for the greater part of that time these people have been most distressingly poor.

I like the black man of Jamaica. No one can help liking him, and still more do I like the black woman, with her smiling face and her strong desire to please. But even in this strong desire to please I trace the mark of that cruel bondage that held the people for so long. Ask a peasant man or woman a simple question, how far, for instance, is a certain place, and he will not tell you the truth, though he may have walked the distance every day of his life, and if he does not know it in terms of miles, has a very good idea of how long it will take you to reach it, and could tell you if he pleased. But no, he tries to find out how far you wish it to be, and that distance it is. Ask about the weather, and if you show you wish for rain your peasant predicts rain, even as he is sure it is going to be fine if you want fine weather. Still at heart he is a slave, dependent in a measure on the kindliness of those above him for all he wants.

But dishonesty is not inborn in the Jamaican peasant. At the Myrtle Bank Hotel, where the servants are not only well paid but get good tips from the guests, the maids are so rigidly honest that the very pins and hairpins I dropped on the floor were picked up and placed on my dressing-table.

It was a significant fact. They were no longer slaves, they were self-respecting men and women—even as you or I. Their very tongue had altered. They spoke excellent English, spoke in soft and pleasant voices, to which it was a pleasure to listen. Most of the negroes have naturally pleasant tones, educated, they are delightful so long as the speaker does not think about himself and become pompous and bombastic.

They tell me there is no discontent among the well-paid employees of the United Fruit Company, that they do their work cheerfully and well, and I have seen for myself happy, honest, well-spoken house servants. I once stayed in a house, that of the Hon. A. Harrison, custos of Manchester. I was, unluckily, very ill, and was waited upon by a girl named Hilda, who spoke exactly like a highly-educated English lady. She had a charmingly modulated voice, and her words were well chosen, though she was a simple, barefooted girl in a cotton gown with a handkerchief on her head.

“How is it, Hilda, you speak so nicely?” I asked in wonder.

She showed a row of even milk-white teeth in a smile.

“I don't know, ma'am,” she said. “Perhaps it is because I have lived with my mistress for thirteen years and learned to talk as she does.”

This is what may be, but as a rule is not.

They tell a story of an inspector at a school examining the children in general knowledge.

“How many feet has a cat?” he asked smiling.

A row of black eyes looked at him stolidly.

He asked again, but still there was no dawning intelligence in those eyes. He began to wonder. Didn't they have cats in this place? Then the teacher stood up.

“How many foot puss hab got?”

And they answered as one.

I could wish that the schools were better equipped, for the negro patois, amusing as it is, is still but patois, and though negro voices can be soft and pleasant, often I have heard them talking among themselves with very ugly intonations indeed.

And yet it is a shame to complain, for though it is delightful to live amidst lovely scenery, it is always the people who add piquancy to life. And the Jamaican peasant was always adding to my joy. He didn't mean to do it. It was when he was most natural I got the best results.

On Kempshot Pen one day the head man came reporting that the men had—like men all over the world—struck for higher wages. But they chose the wrong time. Their mistress could do without them, and she did.

“Tell them,” she said, “they can go. I can manage.” And they set out to enjoy themselves. About an hour later she was aroused by a loud wailing, and in burst a man with his eyes starting out of his head and the lower part of his face a bloody pulp. She did not recognise one of her own men, and he could only gug—gug—gug, and splutter blood and broken teeth. But there were two shamefaced men at the gate who looked as if they had broken all the commandments, and expected to be well beaten for it.

“It was Victor,” they explained.

“Victor!”

Then they told the story. As they were on strike Victor had decided to go shooting. But his gun, an old muzzle-loading affair, declined to go off. He proceeded to investigate and blew down the barrel, while another man kindly applied a fire stick to the touch-hole. The matter was settled in half a second, and he received most of a charge of small shot in the lower part of his face. It looked horrible enough, but it wasn't as bad as it might have been, for either the powder was damp or he had been economical with it. But his wounds were far beyond all simple household skill, and his mistress could only pack him off on a donkey to the doctor in the town below.

An open-air life and a vegetable diet is apparently good for the healing of gun-shot wounds, for long before we expected him, Victor was back again, but slightly scarred and smiling. He was quite well, he explained, and had only lost “a toof or two.” The doctor said he had taken away half his upper jaw, but as he didn't know he had an upper jaw that didn't trouble him.

Meanwhile at the time of the accident the head man had improved the occasion.

“See what happen to Victor when you no work,” said he, and every man jack came back to work without a word about the extra money they had felt they could not do without, and worked so well that the surprised pen owner found she had three days' work done in one.

It seemed to me extraordinary, but she only laughed. She was accustomed to their superstitions working that way. Once she had contracted with a man named Maxwell to come and shoe her horses, to come always the moment he was sent for. He agreed readily enough, but the day a horse cast a shoe and she sent for him, he sent back word he was cutting bush and could not come. Well, she could not wait, so sent for another man, and just as he was finishing the job, into the yard came Maxwell with a bandage over his eye.

“Why, Maxwell, I thought you couldn't come.”

“I come now, missus.”

“But what's the matter with your eye?”

“Well, missus, a bit of bush, he jump up an' lick me in de eye.”

That bit of bush had licked him to such a tune that all the lower eyelid had been torn away, and the dismayed girl could only apply boracic ointment as something harmless, and recommend his going down to a doctor at once. But before he went he assured her solemnly that she had only to send for him for the future, and on that instant he would come up, and up till now he has kept his word. He is afraid some evil thing will happen to him if he does not shoe the Kempshot horses the moment they require his services.

All over the country are dotted little churches, mostly Baptist, but true it is as Huxley—was it not—once said, “Man makes God in his own image.” The damsel, the new housemaid making my bed on the verandah, feelingly remarked upon how cold I must be. It is pleasantly cool towards morning, that is the most that can be said for it, but the real truth came out when Sam was brought outside to share in the delights of the starlit night.

“Poor little baby,” sighed Leonie, “Oh, poor little baby. Missus not taking him outside?”

“Why not?”

“Oh, missus,” in shocked tones, “bad for baby.”

“But why?”

Long hesitation—and then out it came. “He small. Dey can kill him easy.”

It was very startling. “Who will kill him?” Much wriggling. She evidently didn't like to mention it, but she felt the case was desperate.

“Dem tings dat walk about at night.”

“What things?”

We'd seen nothing larger than a mongoose. They may go about at night for all I know, they certainly tore about the grass in the daytime, but I really did not think by the hurried manner in which they declined our acquaintance they'd come very near.

She paused, wriggled again, rubbed first one foot against a neat brown leg and then the other, put her fingers half way down her throat and whispered as she rolled her eyes—

“De duppies.”

No! One couldn't smile, she was so desperately in earnest, so really concerned for the sake of the little helpless baby. We older women might chance things, but she evidently felt it was playing it low down on the baby to expose him to such risks.

“Oh, duppies! There aren't any duppies.”

“Yes, missus,” and her eyes turned towards where, on the shores of the Caribbean, the Montego Bay dead lie resting, sleeping their long last sleep amidst coco-palms and gorgeous flamboyant trees. Oh, a lovely graveyard, and the sea breeze sweeps across it in the daytime, and by night comes whispering the scented wind from the hills. “Dey catch yous”—she grew excited and slurred her words—“tear yous to pieces.”

We are naturally brave. “Oh, Buffer will settle them.” Buffer being the nearest approach to a bull terrier we could get in Jamaica, a powerful and handsome white dog.

Again she shook her head mournfully. “Dey tear him to pieces.”

But in spite of all we slept outside and she shook her head mournfully, “Poor little baby!”

When the duppies did not take us the servants only considered for some reason or other the evil day was postponed. No one liked passing that graveyard a quarter of a mile away at night.

Indeed, this faith in evil spirits seems pretty general, even among people who are a shade higher in the social scale than a house servant.

When we were at the Hyde and Sam was very tiny, we used to put him in his cradle on the porch outside the front door, and leave him there to sleep in the fresh air.

To me one day came the “Busha” of the estate, a brown man, who naturally held a position of authority.

“Mrs Gaunt,” he said uneasily, “the baby is alone.”

“He's asleep.”

“Yes, I see he's asleep. But Mrs Gaunt—we never leave a baby alone.” Then he hesitated quite a long time and added, “it's dangerous.”

I thought of what could possibly harm a sleeping baby. We were close against the mountains. Eagles? But there weren't any eagles, and I didn't expect they would swoop down at the house front if there were. Turkey buzzards? Yes, there were “John Crows.” I'd even seen the birds of carrion on the verandah rails.

“Oh, the 'John Crows,' I never thought they'd hurt him.”

“They won't. They won't touch anything alive. But, Mrs Gaunt,” he sank his voice and spoke very slowly and impressively, “we never leave a baby alone. We believe that the spirits come and play with them and it's bad.”

He was evidently afraid that as a white woman I would laugh at this, and he had only spoken out of the kindness of his heart, because the baby was in danger. But, of course, I did not laugh. Why should I laugh at faiths other than mine? And so encouraged, he told me of the spirits he had seen in broad daylight, spirits that clothed themselves as his friends, and only when he came up close did he perceive they were, as he put it, evil spirits.

Well, as a matter of fact, when he was not likely to be about we let Sam sleep on the porch, and outside he continued to sleep at night in spite of Leonie's protest, and so far as I can see neither duppy nor evil spirit ever did him the least harm, dear little man. In fact he continued to improve till he was the fine baby of the district, and I set it down to the fresh air in which he lived day and night. I am afraid I wickedly used the faith in duppies to my own advantage. Buffer hated a black man. At Montego Bay he used to sit outside the gate and kindly allow people to pass on the other side of the road, but if they came too near the territory he was guarding, he stepped out and held them up. If we heard a squeal we knew it was a woman, if a howl, a man, and flew to the rescue, but if they threw stones at him it almost took a motor car to shift him. He had a great reputation, and there was no predial larceny round my house, chickens and eggs were quite safe. But the people were afraid of him, and when I went for a walk with Buffer peacefully trotting along by my side, for he wouldn't have dreamt of touching anybody away from his own ground, I was more than once met by a line of furious women with sticks uplifted.

“Kill! kill!” they shouted, and I thought of the old days when they would have killed a white woman if they could and not only her dog. It was really awe inspiring. I was afraid they would fling their sticks at Buffer, and then somebody would be hurt. And the men too threatened, “We kill dat dog!”

I thought they would do it too, do it in some cruel and lingering fashion, so I threatened in my turn. “If you touch that dog and hurt him so that he has to die, I warn you his duppy will haunt you, and I tell you the duppy of a big white dog is a much worse thing than the dog himself, for you will not be able to get rid of that!”

And I heard afterwards they said, “Missus go put him duppy on we.” And I had a reputation as a duppy raiser, and Buffer survived till I could get him away to Kempshot Pen, where he had more range, and where his fighting qualities are much valued by his new mistress.

Still is the faith in Obeah strong in Jamaica. It is the ju-ju of the Coast, and all the historians have many tales to tell of its dread powers.

In the year 1780, the parish of Westmoreland was kept in a constant state of alarm by a runaway negro called Plato, who had established himself among the mountains and collected a troop of banditti, of which he was the chief. He robbed very often and murdered occasionally. This could not be allowed, and at last Plato was taken and condemned to death. He told the magistrates who condemned him that his death would be revenged by a storm which would lay waste the whole island that year, and when his negro jailer was binding him to the stake—he was evidently burned to death according to the ruthless custom of the time—he told him he should not live long to triumph in his death, for that he had taken good care to Obeah him before quitting prison.

It certainly did happen, strangely enough, says Matthew Lewis, that before the year was over there was the most violent storm ever known in Jamaica, and as for that jailer, “his imagination was so forcibly struck by the threats of the dying man, that although every care was taken of him, the power of medicine exhausted, and even a voyage to America undertaken in hopes that a change of scene might change the course of his ideas, still from the moment of Plato's death he gradually pined and withered away before the completion of the twelvemonth.”

Now that was written of 1780, but the very morning I wrote it, 7th March 1921 on Kempshot Pen, came a stalwart negro to see Miss Maxwell Hall, and to discuss local politics with her.

“And how is it,” asked the young lady, “Daniel Cooper is such a bad man now? He won't work and he thieves.”

“Missus,” said the cultivator solemnly, “we sorry for him. Can't blame Daniel Cooper. Him can't help it. Him put so. When I go to Cuba him good boy”—the gentleman was over forty even then—“an' when I come back dat Charles Henry put him so. Dat bad man Charles Henry. Make him tief, make him lie, put him so.”

So Daniel Cooper, idle scamp, for some unknown reason is to be pitied not blamed, because it is a well-known fact that Charles Henry is an Obeah man.

Obeah is a very real and live thing in the mountains round Montego Bay. But Miss Maxwell Hall has decreed that the gentleman who has been “put so,” whether he is to be pitied or blamed, shall not come on her land. She will not encourage Obeah.

There was another case, a well-known case some years ago. A woman with two sons got leave to take up land on Kempshot. She put the boys to clear it, and as they worked a man came and said she could not have it. Her husband, who was dead, owed him twenty pounds, and he was taking the land instead. Everyone knew it was a lie, he never had twenty pounds to lend anybody. But as the boys worked he warned them.

“You come back after dinner, see what happen to you.”

But they laughed and came back.

“You no come to-morrow,” threatened the man, and sure enough next day both boys were ill, and while one died the other has been an idiot ever since.

Again, some years ago, a maid-servant refused the advances of a man she disliked. He threatened her.

“You no come to me I put you so.”

But she laughed and tossed her head. And that night she was taken with terrible pains that threatened to crush the life out of her. The doctor was sent for, an English physician. He said he thought the girl had been poisoned, but the case baffled him. No remedy that he could think of had any effect, and he thought she must die.

Then came the cook to her master, her mistress happened to be away.

“Massa,” said she, “Missus very fond of Gloriana.”

He acquiesced. The girl was a favourite with his wife.

“Massa,” pleaded the cook, “you send for Dr—————,” naming a mulatto doctor, a Creole, who had taken his degree in America, “he can cure Gloriana.”

Her master looked dubious. If the man with a good Edinburgh degree could do nothing, he had small faith in any other man. But the cook was determined. “Dr————— can cure.” Therelore Dr————— was sent for. Sure enough, the new man looked at the girl, heard the story, went round the garden, gathered a leaf here and a leaf there, made a decoction which the girl drank, and presently she was well again. The Creole had lived in the island, and had grown up in the ways of the negroes.

But Obeah so used is certainly a very terrible thing, and not to be made light of or trifled with.

For the man of African descent, light-hearted and happy soul as he is, has another side to his character which must not be overlooked, and which has its influence on his life. Ever and again it peeps out.

One day Miss Maxwell Hall, riding among the hills, came upon, as she had done hundreds of times before, a pleasant little river which full to the brim, for the rains had been heavy, wandered along between plantations of sugar-cane. Presently she came to a gate, and as it had never occurred to her to do before, she opened it and rode in. The river widened, the hills closed in, and the trees grew denser, and she found herself riding along a dank, dark path overhung with rose-apple trees and mangoes, and as these trees do when it is very damp, all the leaves were turning black and covered with mildew, the river ended in a dark pool underneath, a pool of deep, black water that poured itself away underground. The ground was sodden and wet, and reeking of decay. The air was heavy and contaminated, and the black leaves of the rose-apple trees shut out the light and were themselves apparently lifeless, or perhaps rather they were reeking with a sinister, evil life. Had she found a pool where witches met, or where the Obeah men wove their ghastly spells? Her very horse's hoof-beats were muffled in the foul and rotten vegetation underfoot.

She made her way back into the brilliant tropical sunshine, which was but a little way off. Leaning against the gate was a man idly chewing a bit of sugar-cane.

“What place is that?” she asked.

He looked up at her.

“It belongs to de church,” he said.

“Belongs to the church!” she said. “Then, why on earth don't they clear away some of those mouldy old apple trees?”

“Huh!” said he, “dey likes it dat way. It be Baptism Hole!”

And so it was, the place used for one of the most important ceremonies of the Baptist church!

They fear still these people, I am afraid, some of them some unknown terrible power.

At Kempshot Pen there is an observatory built by the late Mr Maxwell Hall, who installed there a telescope, because he was an astronomer. Always his daughter used to help her father in his lifetime, and on one occasion there came to her no less a person than the schoolmaster from the nearest village, seeking information about the stars. She gave him a couple of elementary books, and suggested that he should come up some evening and look through the telescope. He came, a black man, immaculately clad in a neat tweed suit, a high starched collar, a silken tie and—a machete was concealed under his arm up his coat.

His hostess was very much astonished, but she said nothing, only suggested he should look at the full moon through the telescope. He assented, spent an instructive evening, and then over rum and water and cake opened his heart.

There were two opinions in the village, he said, and he himself had not known which to believe. One was that the squire opened the roof, and putting up the long tube drew down the stars and examined them, the other that he went up through the tube to the stars and moon! Now he knew.

But, mark you, what a step upward it means that this man should come to enquire, even with a machete under his arm.

They say that the last census gave half the people of marriageable age in Jamaica as married, but had I not been told that, I should have thought with Lady Nugent that the Jamaican woman did not think much of matrimony. What she does want is a child, and a child she very often has, no matter what teachers and preachers may say to the contrary. Sometimes a couple, when they have got over the flush and restlessness of youth, will live together peaceably and happily, either married or unmarried, but the average Jamaican peasant girl—I do not say all, but many certainly—will often have a child before she settles down. As in Africa, it is motherhood that counts first.

I discussed the matter with Christy, who presided over the forlorn stone-paved cavern called a kitchen when I first arrived in Jamaica. Christy was a wild-looking lady with her hair on end, bare feet of course, and a ragged skirt. She had been comely in her own way, but she was as dirty as she was unkempt, and decidedly as useless. She had, however, great dramatic powers and could tell a story. She had three children and she displayed them with pride.

No husband was in evidence, so I concluded rashly she was a widow.

“Oh no, missus. My husban' he get intelligence an' he leff me.”

I didn't wonder at his leaving her. I was only surprised that he did not “get intelligence” before she had three children.

“I got 'nother chile,” said she, as if fearing these three did not do her justice, “a white chile.”

I wasn't accustomed to Jamaican ways then and I was startled. The three before me could hardly have been blacker.

“Him's fader white colonel,” said she proudly, and she mentioned a well-known name in the island, “him's fader very good to me. Have him before I get married.”

I suppose I looked a little surprised.

“Not do that in England?” asked Christy, seeking information, and I mendaciously assured her that every woman in that favoured land waited till she went to church and wore a ring before she had a child.

I was introduced to the white son later on, a great hulking mulatto with rather a sullen air, and I noticed that the son born out of wedlock was treated with great respect by the sister and brothers who in England would be counted the more fortunate. They all called him “massa.” But he was good to his wild-looking mother, and brought her and her family many presents. I was not surprised that she was very proud of the colonel's son.

Then came Rebekah, who took her place when we could stand Christy and her brood no longer.

Rebekah had a child, and was openly proud of him. We always discussed him when she kneaded the bread, and I stood over her to see that she did it, because if I had not, she would have considered that kneading as done.

“Missus looking lovely,” said Rebekah, “in her pink dress.” Missus' dress wasn't pink and she didn't look lovely, but I suppose Rebekah considered it a good way to open the morning. Perhaps if I felt she considered me lovely, I might ease up on the bread kneading. I never did, but she never failed to try. Then she told me about her “chile.”

“Yes, missus, de fuss' chile I get he die.”

“Ah, that was sad. And what was his name?”

“Him name Lily. Den I pray to the Lard an' He give me anoder.”

“And your husband—” I began.

“Oh, missus, I get no husban'. He's fader, Amos Hussy, very good man he's fader, help me with de chile.”

“A white man?” I asked, remembering Christy's colonel.

“Oh, missus!”—she stopped kneading—“if he white I be rich woman. He a cultivator. Very good man.”

But Frances the laundry woman was franker still. She brought with her her son “Hedgar,” aged eight, and she explained—

“Hedgar's fader very proud of him, tink most of Hedgar, more'n all his sons. He want me to leave him an' he keep him, but I say 'no.' Hedgar de on'y chile I get, mus' keep him, an' I get no work in dat country,”

That far country was about twelve miles off.

But the other sons were a little mystifying; however, she kindly explained, being a talkative soul.

“He get four sons by four women, all about de same age, but he tink most of Hedgar.”

I really felt a little delicacy about pursuing enquiries any further, but Frances felt none. It was commonplace to her.

“He get married,” she chortled, “an' his wife give him no chilluns!”

Frances let me in for sanctioning immorality with a vengeance. She had a room in which she and Edgar slept, and she kept herself while I paid her the magnificent sum of 7s. a week. Too little, I admit. But what was I to do? It was higher than the wages around, and she certainly wasn't worth what she got. Still she apparently felt no lack, for when I saw a strange girl about the place, I was informed it was Frances' cousin come to stay with her in the country for a change! And when the cousin was gone, seeing I said nothing, she came to me and told me that the man she was going to marry wanted to come and see her.

“An' he say, missus, he want to come like a man an' not hidin'. Say, ask missus, let him come.”

I was struck with the nice feeling on the man's part, and cordially gave my permission, though I must say I was surprised at its being asked.

He came one night after I had gone to bed and next morning he was engaged in chopping wood for the cook. And then I found to my dismay that he and Frances and Edgar shared her room!

What was I to say? My leave had been asked. So I shut my eyes and said nothing, and the gentleman stayed a fortnight, and then sent in to know what present I was going to give him before he went away!

I suppose to the average stay-at-home middle-class English woman this state of things sounds shockingly immoral, but after all is it not that things are here done openly that in other places are done under the rose.

Up and down Jamaica have I been, and I can honestly say that the average Jamaican peasant woman looks happy. Nay, she looks more than happy, for happiness may be a passing condition, the majority of the Jamaican peasant women look entirely content. There is no unspoken longing in a peasant woman's face, she is quite satisfied.

“Missus,” said Leonie persuasively, “me kindly begging you leff me sleep home.” Now Leonie had sworn by all her gods that she would stay at her post all night, so enquiries were made and it was found “me cousin” was going to have a baby in six weeks, and as it was her first, very naturally she did not like being alone at night. But what about her husband? Oh, she hadn't a husband. Whatever made missus think that? The father? “Oh, he nice young man, he helping her a lot, but he too young, not worth marrying.”

“Missus, kindly begging—” insinuatingly.

Well, of course, Leonie spent her nights with the expectant young mother, and everybody was satisfied.

The real trouble is that these poor little children thus brought into the world are often not properly looked after. How can a young woman keep herself and her child on 7s. a week, and that is more than the majority of them get? And so often it ends in a pitiful little white coffin with a forlorn little wreath of fern upon it, carried on a man's shoulder to the graveyard. I have seen them often. There are no followers, though the Jamaican loves a funeral.

“Not worth while,” said Malvina when I asked why no one went to the poor little baby's funeral.

Not that the women do not help each other. The fat, smiling cook at Kempshot who could make most excellent omelettes, had not only her own child to keep, but two of her dead sister's. She was not married, neither had the sister been. But will any of the virtuous venture to cast a stone! Who amongst us who pride ourselves upon our decent lives would do as much. But again the difficulty crops up. Those children will grow more and more expensive. How can she start them in the world?

Sometimes these children are “lent out.” It is a curious custom in the country, the survival of the old slave days when there were numerous stable helpers and servants in the Great House, and a child was sent by his mother there and became the understudy of an understudy, and so learned about horses or gardening or housework. Now, of course, there are no white people whose houses are open in such fashion, but it is no uncommon thing for a child to be “lent out” by its mother to some small cultivator, either to do housework or to work in the fields for his or her food or clothes. The food is plain and, often like the clothes I am afraid, scanty.

Miss Maxwell Hall was called out one morning to interview a miserable-looking little boy, about as high as the table, who in a ragged shirt and pants stood in the chill of early morning at her gate, holding a still more miserable-looking little white dog on a string.

He had come to see missus, he said; he had waited all night to see her, waited in the cold and wet, poor child, for it is cold in the hills to these people. His mammy had lent him out to Mr—————” over on the hill yander,” and someone had given him the puppy, which he loved dearly. And every bone in that poor little dog was plainly visible, his master did not give the little boy much, but he provided nothing at all for the dog. So last night Mr————— had set his dinner down and gone out for a moment, and while he was away the little starving dog had wolfed the lot and then wisely run away and hidden in the bush. Upon the small owner fell the dinner-less man's wrath and he beat him, beat him with a board with nails in it, and he displayed to the horrified girl the marks of that castigation. Then he had fled away, recovered his dog and come to her for protection. Poor little “lent out” child!

But all masters and mistresses are not so cruel. Many are kindly enough and share what they have with their dependents. The trouble is that they are ignorant, they do not know how to make the most of the opportunities that are theirs.

When I lived at the Hyde among the hills in Trelawny, the people used to come down to the Great House to see us and sell us eggs and fruit—often I am afraid our own eggs and our own fruit—and they used to beg a little. Retinella, whom I knew had fowls, and who was I think honest, used to bring a dozen eggs for sale, and then produce a very tiny bottle.

“Missus, I kindly begging you a little scent, going to a wedding”—or a funeral. Both these entertainments required perfuming, and there were more of them I am sure than the population could possibly stand.

But they did not always beg and they did not always sell. Sometimes they would bring a few heads of corn, a yam or a sour sop, and when payment was offered it would be, “Missus, I kindly giving it you. You give me things, you never let me give you things.” So then we would accept gratefully, and cast about to see what return could be made without it being too patent that we were giving something for value received.

The town man likes to see himself in print, and not only the letters in the Gleaner, the principal Jamaican paper, but the advertisements show his sentiments.

I think the first thing that struck me was the many advertisements for straightening the hair. I am accustomed in these northern latitudes to see many prescriptions offering a permanent wave that no damp will affect, and I have seen not only women but young men with their hair carefully “Marcelled” with the curling tongs, so why I should be amused at the man who wants the kink taken out of his locks I do not know. There are certainly many men and women who do desire it.

But where the coloured man really spreads himself out is in the matrimonial advertisements. They are a constant source of delight.

Sometimes a lady wants to be married. Here is one who is beginning early—

“To Marry,” the advertisement is headed. “A lady eighteen years of age wants a husband” (no beating about the bush, plain statement of fact); “must be from a respectable family. Fair or white preferred. Enclose photograph; please send name and address.—Apply Miss G., c/o Gleaner, Kingston.”

“Bride Wanted,” says another advertisement; but the gentleman who wants has an eye to the main chance. “To correspond with a lady of some independent means with the view of marriage; any colour except white, must be good at sewing; March born preferred.—Apply 'Businessman,' Williamsfield P.0.”

“Any colour except white” is, of course, sheer defiance.

But it is the advertisements of those who rather wish the knot had never been tied that are the most amusing.

“Notice.—My wife, Sophia Junor, having left my home from the 31st day of May in my sick bed, and up to this date having not returned, this is to warn the public that I do not hold myself responsible for any debt she might contract. Matthias Junor, Bath P.O., Knockands.”

Very often the complaining man warns the public that he intends to marry again, as “I cannot manage myself.” Sometimes he puts it in much more grandiloquent language.

“My wife, Mrs Henrietta Scott, has not been under my protection for the last twenty-one years, 1899 to 1920, and I am not aware of her existence outside of Jamaica. Unless I am put in possession of information as to whether she is living or not, I shall proceed to enter into contract of matrimony. Joseph Scott, Windward Boad, Kingston, 12th July 1920.”

On other occasions the lady has something to say on the subject.

“Notice.—I, Edith Phinn, hereby beg to notify the public that my chief cause to leave my husband was this: He has ill-treated me and threatened to shoot me with his revolver, and I am now residing at my families residence, 50 Cumberland Road, Spanish Town.”

I do like “my families residence.”

And yet another indignant lady—

“Notice.—I beg to inform the public that I have not left the care and protection of my husband as stated by him” (I do regret that I missed his advertisement), “and furthermore all his real and personal belongings are for myself and his four children. We are living in his home, I never left it even for a day. So I therefore warn the public not to transact any business with him without my consent.—(Mrs) M. E. Sibblies, Lewis Store, Clonmel, P.O.”

A lady who can take care of herself!

I suppose nobody quite realises what it is that appeals to a man in the woman he takes. Presumably there is usually some strong attraction, and yet there is a story told in Jamaica, a perfectly true story I believe, which makes me feel that some people are either easily satisfied or exceedingly accommodating.

There were brides and grooms and bridesmaids and ushers, and much excitement and confusion and giggling, but the parson went on gravely with the ceremony, trusting by his correct demeanour to bring these dark children of the church to a realisation of the solemnity of the sacrament in which they were taking part. But they would not calm down.

“I think—” he began severely, when the last words had been spoken, but an usher, who had been particularly objectionable, interrupted him, and he gave him the attention now he had denied him during the service.

“But sali, but minister,” stammered the excited gentleman in a high collar, “you's married de wrong woman on to de wrong man!”

Now I, being a common-sense heathen, should have been tempted to say, like the clergyman officiating at Easter-time marriages in the Potteries, when ten or twelve couples are married at once, “Now, sort yourselves.” It seems to me it is the intention that counts. But our clergyman was made of different stuff. He firmly believed he had bound indissolubly men and women who did not desire each other, and in much consternation he retired to his study and sat there with his head in his hands, wondering what on earth he should do.

Meanwhile, the wedding party also discussed the matter. And presently the much-troubled parson heard a tap at his door.

“Come in,” he said gloomily, and in came the wedding parties, all wreathed in smiles.

“Well, minister,” said the spokesman amiably, “we's been tarkin' an' tarkin' an' we's 'greed to mak' ta change!”

And the parson was mightily relieved. He did not understand how lightly matrimony sits upon the negro.

But that surely was nothing to the predicament of the lady who took her baby to be christened, and announced at the font in answer to the question, “How do you name this child?”

“Call de chile Beel-ze-bub.”

“Oh, but that's not a proper name for a child,” cried the horrified minister.

The proud mother looked at him doubtfully.

“But I get him outer de Bible.”

“But I tell you it's a wicked name,” asseverated the minister.

She sighed. All the trouble to be gone through again.

“Den, minister, what I call him?”

“Well, call him John if you want a Bible name. That's in the Bible.”

Still the woman felt vaguely there was something wrong.

“You sure dat good name for him, minister”—very earnestly.

“Oh yes, quite sure,” said the minister, anxious to put as far behind them as possible the dreadful scandal of Beelzebub.

So John the baby was christened, and the mother carried it outside and the minister came out and did the benevolent pastor to her and her friends.

“De chile's name am John,” announced the mother.

“Hoo! John!” snorted a neighbour with more knowledge, “but amn't de piccaninny a gal?” And sure enough she was.

Leonie, being sent on a message, returned nonchalantly and empty-handed.

“But, Leonie, where's the parcel?” Leonie smiled non-committally.

“But, surely, if they didn't give you a parcel they gave you a letter?”

“Oh yes, missus,” agreed Leonie readily, “dey give me a paper but he lose he's self on de way up.” And of course there was no more to be said.

My wrath was as nothing to the wrath of a lady who wanted a pergola made exactly like one she had already that had been up for three or four years and was nicely covered with roses.

She took the negro carpenter and showed him the pergola, measured it under his eyes, gave him the measurements and the lumber, and left him to make another on the other side of the house. Then, alas, she went away for the day. When she came back, to her horror and dismay she found her original pergola, all covered with its nicely-tended creepers—the work of years—had been taken down, stripped of its greenery, laid on the ground, and the thoughtful and careful carpenter was engaged in measuring it so as to make the new one exactly like it! What she said I don't know, but incidents like this help me to understand the punishments the slaves received of yore.

This same woman's husband happened to say casually to his carter that he would want him to go into Montego Bay, 16 miles away, the next day. Next day he found carter and team missing, and could only use bad language. They did not return till long after dark.

“Well, boss,” said the driver cheerfully, “I been to Kerr's, an' I been to Hart's, an' I been to—” and he mentioned half a dozen places—“an' I wait an' wait, an' I wait, an' I go back an' dey none get nothen' for yous.''

“Why, you fool,” said his angry master, “you ought to have come to me, I had something I wanted you to take into town.”

After all, the uneducated negro is not the only fool in the world, and though I laugh, I feel very kindly towards the sinners.

But, sometimes, their foolishness harmed themselves, though I am bound to say that was not their view of the case.

One of my neighbours, a very kindly American, being told by her boy that he wanted to go off early on Christmas Day, thoughtfully asked him if he would then rather have the money instead of the Christmas dinner. He considered a moment, and to her surprise elected to have the dinner.

On Christmas Day, immediately after the first breakfast, which is very early in the tropics—seldom after seven, often long before—she went into the kitchen to give her orders for the day, and there to her great surprise she saw her boy tucking into his Christmas dinner which the cook had cooked for him.

“Me eating it now, missus,” he explained with a grin.

“But, Howard!” cried the lady, “how can you possibly eat your dinner immediately after breakfast?”

“Wanting a long day,” he explained, and the explanation seemed to him perfectly natural.

His mistress knew that boy. There is a negro pudding made of grated coconut, coconut milk, corn-meal and sugar, baked. Not a bad pudding if a little is taken, but Howard one day got outside a large pie-dish full, and then came rubbing his stomach and groaning to his mistress.

“Why, Howard,” she said a little severely, “I should think you did have indigestion. Why didn't you put half that pudding away till to-morrow?”

“Ah, missus,” he said, “when he in dish, pudding hab two masters. Now———” No, words were unnecessary. He'd certainly got that pudding.

I suppose his case was on a par with that of the woman servant in the same place who, usually going barefoot, appeared on that same Christmas morning of 1920 in a pair of elaborate boots, very high-heeled and much too small for her. She could hardly totter when she came to wish her master and mistress a happy Christmas before setting out on her holiday. Her mistress said nothing. She had exhausted herself over Howard, but her husband, the old doctor, took it upon himself to remonstrate.

“Oh, Alice, how can you wear such boots!”

“Ony for to-day, doctor,” she said insinuatingly, “on'y jus' for to-day!” A long holiday meant for enjoyment, in boots too tight for her, with heels raised at least a couple of inches—imagine the agony of it.

But if the ignorant negro is foolish, his foolishness is as nothing sometimes to that of the white man who sets out to help and improve him.

Britain is not always wise in the Governors she chooses, though the Governor in a small community is a powerful means to good. There was one wellmeaning man in an island that shall be nameless, who was certainly most desirous to help the black people, therefore it occurred to him one day to send a telegram to a rich planter of his acquaintance, asking him to come and see him as he had something of importance to discuss with him. Now, a request from a Governor is almost a royal command, but our planter knew his Governor. He was busy, and he did not there and then dash off and travel the many miles that lay between him and Government House. Still, since his estate was a long way off, he came at some inconvenience to himself.

And the first greetings over:

“You have the welfare of your people at heart, Mr————?”

“Surely, sir.”

“I wanted to know—would you be prepared to put up a picture show?”

“On my place, sir?”

“Why, yes, of course, for the benefit of your hands.”

“But—but——I'm at least five-and-twenty miles from the port, and the port is at least six days from New York, and——”

“Yes, of course, I know that.”

“And where am I to get fresh pictures?”

The Governor looked attentive.

“They would come to the first show,” explained the planter patiently, “and enjoy it, they would come to the second night, the third night they'd grumble, and after that they'd laugh at me for a fool.”

“H'm—ha—h'm. Well, what about dancing? They're fond of dancing?”

“Of course.”

“Would you put them up a dancing hall?”

“With a floor?”

“Of course.”

And the planter sighed again for his wasted time, for everyone—except this Governor apparently—knows that the West Indian negro dances every night of his life very happily on the bare earth by the light of the stars or the moon! And I agree with the planter such exercise is a great deal more wholesome taken in the fresh air as the plantation hands are content to take it.

That planter went home an angry man, and he was met by his still more angry head man, who had taken his boots to be mended.

“Massa—massa—” he stammered furiously, “dat man—dat tief—boots no mended—he wearing dem. Massa—massa, can I have him up for breach of promise?”

But if anyone is really interested in peasant life in Jamaica he should read the books of Herbert de Lisser, C.M.G., whose country will some day be deeply grateful to him that he has—among other things he has done for her—portrayed to the life a type that is rapidly passing away.

Mr Harrison, the Custos of Manchester, tells me that the negro is becoming proud. It is the first step upward. He will not always beg, however great his need. He will not if he can help it acknowledge his poverty. He told me how upon one of his sugar estates he found that for some time the cook he had engaged to cook for the working women, who were supposed to provide the material for breakfast, had nothing to do. The women had no food to be cooked. But they never complained, hungry they quietly went to work. He therefore instructed his “busha” to supply yams or plantains or cocos and coconut oil sufficient for a good breakfast for each woman. They accepted it gratefully, and they did a far better day's work afterwards. This same gentleman told me how the little children are like their parents, becoming proud and self-respecting. They are very poor in that parish where a former wasteful generation has denuded the mountains of trees to grow coffee, and so interfered with the rainfall—but do you think the children are going to acknowledge their poverty? Oh, they have taken their dinners to school, and if you doubt it, they hold up their little tin pails proudly. Not for worlds would they take off the cover and show that inside is that most uninteresting of all foods, cold boiled yam and not, I am afraid, sometimes enough of that.

No one will ever taunt such women and children with being servile. Never!

As I write this, I come across an extract from an old writer on the negro slave which is worth quoting, the contrast is so great.

“Negroes,” he says, “are crafty, artful, plausible, not often grateful for small services, deceitful, overreaching... they are avaricious and selfish, giving all the plague they can to their white rulers, little ashamed of falsehood and even strongly addicted to theft.” But still even he admits “he has some good qualities mingled with his unamiable ones. He is patient, cheerful and commonly submissive, capable at times of grateful attachments where uniformly well treated, and kind and affectionate towards his kindred and offspring.” And he goes on to say how tender are the negro mothers. In fact, even he had to acknowledge that the great bulk of the negroes were beyond the master's observation, and we of later date can see for ourselves that the faults he complains of are not peculiar to negroes, but are the common faults of the slave.

As yet, however, the man of African race is often something of a slavish imitator of things European. He struts and boasts of his progress exactly as children do. After all, he has had such a toilsome way to climb since Britain bestowed upon him freedom and poverty, is it to be wondered at if occasionally he has gone a little astray.

A little while ago the Hon. Marcus Garvey visited Jamaica, and black Jamaica celebrated his arrival by a full page advertisement in the Gleaner with a very large picture—a little smeared in the printing—of the gentleman in question, the most noticeable feature of which was his large expanse of white waistcoat.

“Big Meetings & Concerts” (announced the advertisement in largest type) “Arranged All Over the Island to Hear Hon. Marcus Garvey. Elected Provisional President of Africa, President General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and” (oh bathos!) “President of the Black Star Line Steamship Corporation.

“He will be in Jamaica nine days and will speak as follows———”

And then a list is given of the places at which he will speak, and the subjects on which he will speak, and it also announces that as President General of his Association he will appear on these nights in his robes of office.

At the bottom of the page it says in large type that Marcus Garvey was elected by twenty-five thousand delegates to the World Convention of Negroes in New York last summer as the First Provisional President of Africa.

This is delicious! I don't want to laugh at the black man, but I think it's a serious clog on his upward career to elect Presidents in this casual manner. I have seen the only attempt at modern civilised government in Africa by the black man, and I can only condemn it as a dismal failure, why, then, should the men of negro descent take upon themselves to elect for the negroes in Africa a President without a with or by your leave. It is really much as if the Americans in New York decided to elect a President General of Europe or Asia without reference to the feelings of the peoples of those continents. Of course, it may be merely a term of endearment—if so, I have nothing to say against it. Everybody to their taste. President of the Negro Improvement Association is quite another matter. We all wish that society well, so well we would not have it weakened by any comic opera blandishments, and President of the Black Star Line is quite legitimate, even though it is a little—well—just a little consequential, for the “Black Star Line” is composed as yet of but one steamer, the Yarmouth, under 1000 tons. The first time she came into Kingston harbour, black Kingston went hysterical with delight. That a ship should sail with a black captain, and manned by a black crew, seemed to it an amazing thing. When the dark man makes a fuss over a ship run by his own people, he is saying in effect—“We are children as yet, but you see we are growing up. We are coming into our own.”

It seems to me the negro's great fault is that he is bombastic and claims too much. Marcus Garvey and his crowd are I suppose the natural reaction from the years of ghastly slavery, when a black man could not even own himself. Of course we only notice those who come strutting ridiculously before the footlights. I know there is many and many a negro as decent, upright, and self-respecting a man as his white confrÈre, but the trouble is we do not notice him beside his more boastful brother.

That the negro does want his interests looking after I have not the slightest doubt. Our servants used to come to Eva who was clever with her needle to cut out their clothes for them, and it was wicked to see the stuff which those poor girls, whose pay was only 6s. and 7s. a week, used to buy at ridiculously high prices. I have seen 1s. 6d. and 1s. 9d. a yard paid for unbleached calico that could not possibly have cost the seller 1 1/2d. a yard. And it had been bought at a negro shop, they were, in fact, imposed upon by men of their race.

How these things are to be corrected I know not. Education I suppose, and education we must remember is not the mere teaching of reading and writing. I am sorry to say I doubt sometimes if the authorities in Jamaica are giving the Jamaican the best education that they can.

“Dear Mrs———— is so good.” That is, good for the negroes. They wouldn't even ask her to dinner because she is not amusing. They would laugh very much at the idea of themselves subscribing to her standards of life.

No wonder we get inflated gentlemen proclaiming themselves “Provisional President of Africa!”

For the negro is capable of better things. It is a great shame that certain of his numbers should make him a laughing-stock.

When first the idea of contingents of West Indian soldiers for the World War was mooted, there was opposition. It would be such a bad thing for the negro, it would give him an extravagant idea of his own value, the country on the return of its soldiers might look forward to discontent in a certain section, might even fear outrage and rapine.

But I think the contrary has been the case. Exceptions of course there must have been. I should not like to set out to count the exceptions among the white returned soldiers, but the average Jamaican soldier settled down quietly to his work in his own country, worked all the better because he had been counted a citizen of the Empire, was proud that his thews and sinews had helped mightily in the great struggle, was glad to be received at last on equal terms by men of the colour that so long had held him in bondage.

I hold, and hold very strongly, that the very first step in the upraising of either a man or a people is the cultivation of proper pride.

Read this letter I received from a doctor in the Cameroons during the war—

“Certainly the wickedest three hours,” he wrote concerning a night attack up country, “I ever put in.” We could not guess the range in the cloudy moonlight. The Germans held a hill, we had not a scrap of cover, the breast-high grass prevented charging, and also made the men stand up to shoot. By 6.30 a.m. the Germans cleared out precipitately, leaving us in possession of a very good camp.

“The men were splendid. Tmoru Calfa, a sergeant-major, shot through the spine high up, lay down by his section and controlled their fire. He died next day. His was only one instance of their conduct.”

When the Great Roll is called, not among the least surely will be found the name of that sergeant, pagan from the north of the Gold Coast, who, being shot high up in the spine, lay down beside his men, controlled their firing and died next day. Not the Unknown Warrior buried in Westminster Abbey could have done more.

Which man will the negro race in future years think upon more gladly as its representative, Marcus Garvey or Tmoru Calfa?

The coming of the negro race to the New World marks a most extraordinary phase in the world's history. They came unwillingly as slaves, and as slaves they were held with all the ignominy inseparable from that condition. Of the race in America I know nothing save what little I have seen in the streets of New Orleans, where they seem as far apart from the ruling race as the mountain tops in Jamaica are from the river-beds. But in Jamaica, whatever there may have been in the old days, there is now no such cleft. There is, of course, a difference, but it is a difference that is passing, that will pass as the years go on and the dark man fits himself to take his place in the world as the social equal of the white.

Already he sits in the Legislature. He has come a long, long way up from the chained savage brought in the slave ships. I hope that if a dark man reads this book he will not think unkindly of me for writing as if there were a difference between black and white. There is, it would be foolish to ignore it, but it is only the difference of education and training. We must remember that in past ages the Anglo-Saxon stood in the market-place in Rome chained and in slavery, that blue eyes and flaxen hair marked the savage, and dark complexion and black eyes the civilised man. The time of servitude of the black man is a little closer. He has to come up the same stony path that the white man trod, and he will do it more easily and more quickly—he is doing it—because the white man has prepared the way.

And I say that deliberately, knowing all the hardships that the white man has inflicted, for when I talk of the time of servitude of the blacks in the West Indies, you, my readers, will do me the justice to own that I have by no means glossed over the crudities and the foolishness and the brutality of men of my own colour. But the world is changing, changing fast. It is a better place to live in in this twentieth century, it will be a better place still as the years roll on, and the black man like the white will come into his own.