42 NAPARIMA. 



loyal, able, and valiant citizens. Is it too late to begin now ? 

 Is there no colony left as yet not delivered over to a self- 

 government which actually means, more and more accord- 

 incr to the statements of those who visit the colonies 



O 



government by an Irish faction; and which will offer a 

 field for settling our soldiers when they have served their 

 appointed time ; so strengthening ourselves, while we re- 

 ward a class of men who are far more respectable, and far 

 more deserving, than most of those on whom we lavish our 

 philanthropy ? 



Surely such men would prove as good subjects as old Isaac 

 and his comrades. For fifty-three years, I was told, he 

 had lived and worked in Trinidad, always independent ; so 

 independent indeed, that the very last year, when all but 

 starving, like many of the coloured people, from ^the long 

 drought which lasted nearly eighteen months, he refused all 

 charity, and came down to this very estate to work for three 

 months in the stifling cane-fields, earning or fancying that 

 he earned his own livelihood. A simple, kindly, brave 

 Christian man he seemed, and all who knew him spoke of 

 him as such. The most curious fact, however, which I 

 gleaned from him was his recollection of his own " conver- 

 sion." His Mary, of whom all spoke as a woman of 

 a higher intellect than he, had "been in the Gospel" 

 several years before him, and used to read and talk to 



