A LOST FEBRUARY 



culture or fruit culture, or culture of any kind as we 

 understand the word, except where the great Fruit 

 Companies have possession; the landscape marred 

 and torn, but not subdued ; no open fields, no 

 smooth hill-slopes, rarely a well-kept garden or a bit 

 of lawn; rude fertile nature everywhere, struggling 

 to shake off the lazy grasp of these black children. 

 Lazy they no doubt are. During the three or four 

 months of the mango season, we were told, it is very 

 diflBcult to get man or woman to' work. As the 

 mangoes grow everywhere, the people subsist upon 

 them, and life becomes a holiday. Hence the fruit 

 companies and sugar planters have to import cooUe 

 labor, East Lidiamen, — a feeble race, but faithful 

 and reUable. We saw a great gathering of these 

 people in Kingston hving in a large warehouse on 

 one of the docks. They had worked out their ten 

 years, and were awaiting a steamer to take them 

 back to India. How homesick many of them were, 

 poor souls, and how tedious the waiting was to 

 them! They were a quiet, picturesque crowd, but 

 very wary of the camera, unless we first sprinkled 

 them with a little copper. When we were sauntering 

 through the market, the Lidian women, crouched 

 by their baskets filled with stuff on sale, would 

 spring up and turn their backs the moment they 

 saw the camera in my son's hand. They seem a 

 much prouder and more exclusive race than the 

 African. 



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