BA4 i: PROBLEMS IN THE WEST INDIES 391 



person. Caste and station are acknowledged, and the 

 negroes realize that it depends upon intelligence and 

 merit; and they do not feel thai service is degrading. 



They also recognize the necessity of strong government, 

 and have a deep-seated respeet for tile laws and those 



who administer them. 



The devotion and respect <f the English negroes for 

 their country is most impressive. One morning, while 

 watching a landing-drill of the British tars upon the 

 beautiful campus at Barbados, my attention was dis- 

 tracted by a great black market-woman who kept mut- 

 tering to herself in a perfect ecstasy of delight: " Dem 's 

 Mistress Keen's 1 soldiers, and in de time when de enemy 

 comes dey '11 take care ob me." This feeling that the 

 government will protect the rights of the lowest is the 

 great safeguard against any inherited tendency of sav- 

 agery to be disorderly. 



In my travels in the West Indies I have never seen the 

 least incivility on the part of the negroes toward the 

 whites, though I have seen them at their best and at their 

 worst. As a geologist, it has been my habit to employ 

 the first man or boy I saw upon the road to carry speci- 

 mens and do the drudgery on my excursions into the 

 country. I have never had one fail me within his limita- 

 tions, nor be less respectful than if he were the private 

 orderly to a general. 



Much has been written upon the low moral condition, 

 mental degradation, and superstition of the West Indian 

 negroes. Concerning the first charge it can be aaid that, 

 in all respects other than that of looseness in sexual rela- 

 tions, they are superior, as a class, to the negroes of our 

 own country. The white clergy in the West Indies are in 

 close touch with the bhick population, who are not cut 

 off from the higher class of religious instruction, as in this 



country, ('rimes againsi property or person are com- 

 paratively rare, and the n.-groes have qoI the reputation 



1 yuctii Victoria, 



/ 



