FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE COLONY. 59 
encountered in Water Street was surprising and be- 
wildering far beyond my pre-conceptions. The infinite 
gradations of colour, the association of African, Asiatic, 
European and American types, the variety of costume, 
and the intermingling of at least three different tongues, 
arouse an interest which survives many other novel 
sensations. He whose ideas of the Negroes have chiefly 
been derived on the one side from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 
and on the other from the “ Minstrel” entertainments of 
Messrs. MOORE and BURGESS, finds at first sight of the 
black man 2m propria persona that there is much to 
learn and to unlearn, The free and independent air of 
the black labourer and the imperial carriage of his woman- 
kind are, to say the least, unexpeéted, and at the same 
time one cannot but remark how easily the veneer, at 
least, of civilisation is borne by a people, who, you will 
quickly be assured, are incapable of genuine moral, or 
intelleétual advance. This paper must not become an 
argumentative dissertation on the possibilities and limi- 
tations of the West Indian Black, but I may observe in 
passing that those who hasten to apprise you of his 
inherent and incorrigible degradation not only expeét 
too much of a race not more than two generations re- 
moved from slavery, but also implicitly belittle the 
achievements of English civilisation as a reforming influ- 
ence. From a merely impressionist point of view, it 
must be admitted, there is very little that is attra€tive in 
the Blacks. They appear to the observer as a people 
which, having lost its own language, traditions and every 
distin€&tive feature except, of course, its physical type, 
has borrowed the outward chara€teristics of an entirely 
different race, and, superficially at least, the borrowed 
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