COOLIES. 



17 



wants occasioned by our trying climate and long cold win- 

 ters, in Jamaica the same class do not reach any such 

 crisis, until much more advanced in years. They never feel 

 cold weather, they can easily get all they require for 

 their support if they can walk, so abundant are the fruits 

 and edible productions of the island ; and though the ties 

 which bind the parent and child together are generally 

 much more frail here than at the north, and though the 

 aged rarely depend upon their children for any assistance, 

 yet the means of subsistence are so much more accessible, 

 that one never hears of a person contracting disease or suf- 

 fering very seriously for want of food. 



I here beheld, for the first time, a class of beings of 

 whom we have heard much, and for whom I have felt con- 

 si derable interest. I refer to the Coolies, imported by the 

 British government to take the place of the faineant ne- 

 groes, when the apprenticeship system was abolished. 

 Those that I saw were wandering about the streets, dressed 

 rather tastefully, but always meanly, and usually carrying 

 over their shoulder a sort of chiffio?iier's sack, in which 

 they threw whatever refuse stuff they found in the streets, 

 or received as charity. Their figures are generally superb, 

 and their eastern costume, to which they adhere as far as 

 their poverty will permit of any clothing, sets off their lithe 

 and graceful forms to great advantage. Their faces are 

 almost uniformly of the finest classic mould, and illumi- 



