COOLIE IVIVES. 49 



little lady who excited my astonishment. She was, I was 

 told, twelve years old. She sat summing away on her 

 slate, bedizened out in gauze petticoat, velvet jacket be- 

 tween which and the petticoat, of course, the waist showed 

 ju'st as nature had made it gauze veil, bangles, necklace, 

 nose-jewel ; for she was a married woman, and her Papa 

 (Anglice, husband) wished her to look her best on so im- 

 portant an occasion. 



This over-early marriage among the Coolies is a very 

 serious evil, but one wdiich they have brought with them 

 from their own land. The girls are practically sold by their 

 fathers while yet children, often to wealthy men much older 

 than they. Love is out of the question. But what if the 

 poor child, as she grows up, sees some one, among that 

 overplus of men, to whom she for the first time in her life 

 takes a fancy ? Then comes a scandal ; and one which is 

 often end.ed swiftly enough by the cutlass. Wife-murder 

 is but too common among these Hindoos, and they cannot 

 be made to see that it is wrong. " I kill my own wife. 

 Why not? I kill no other man's wife," was said by 

 as pretty, gentle, graceful a lad of two-and-twenty as 

 one need see ; a convict performing, and perfectly, the office 

 of housemaid in a friend's house. There is murder of wives, 

 or quasi-wives now and then, among the baser sort of 

 Coolies murder because a poor girl will not give her ill- 



VOL. II. E 



