WEST INDIA SOCIETY. 155 



ceeded to make a baptistery of it, and admitted within the church's 

 pale sixteen natural children, some — particularly the half castes — 

 the finest bantlings I had yet seen. Afterwards, four or five others, 

 that recognised more decent fathering, came by way of salvo to the 

 rest. There was a Quadroon girl among the gossips, " beautiful 

 exceedingly.*' 



The notice of strangers in this climate will be much drawn to the 

 women of colour, most of whom, as is known, live with the whites. 

 Had these " light o- loves" been sworn at the Shrine of Paphos it- 

 self, they could not bear more inveterate hostility to poor Hymen 

 than they do. How often have I, when at Bridgetown, battled the 

 point with Miss Caroline ; she is the prettiest minikin in the Antil- 

 les, rather short, and somewhat en bon point, but with the most airy 

 feet, a delicate hand, and such eyes ! not, indeed, the large gazelle 

 ones which have come in vogue of late years ; they had hardly suited 

 her small, though exquisitely regular, features, — but those lesser 

 orbs that flash on you death-black, as a Brunswick trooper. Then 

 Caroline is rather devout in her way, only excusing some small 

 peccadillos with FalstafTs plea, that " 'tis her calling." She came 

 once to play " The Tire Woman," on her Madras coif, at a mirror 

 in my sitting room. 



" So the Bishop," I observed, " will expect all beauties of colour 

 to get themselves spouses on his arrival." 



"You say so for true?" 



"His Lordship is thought to be particularly anxious on that 

 head." 



There was an arch twist of her thumbs, equally naive with that 

 told of the Clodpole sweetheart, as this little impugner of church 

 discipline left the apartment with — " De Bissap shan't marry me ; 

 men of colour make bad husbands ; and and 



And yet we must not wrong these fair ones ; their tone of feeling 

 is rather ill-directed than destroyed. But to return to Spanish Town 

 and its affairs : — 



The good folk of this place, if they are not the most prosperous 

 of his Majesty's lieges, may at all events assert that they trouble 

 him least, either with themselves or their concerns. Even their re- 

 presentatives are seldom or never seen in our Tortolian senate. 

 They live apart in a little world of their own ; the whites exulting 

 in parchment faces, and a tradition of the seat of government being 



stando; quia quando quis habet unam bonam prebendam, tunc 

 dicimus, is ben^ stat." 



