8 
THE PLEISTOCENE AGE [ch. i 
the interior where ordinary white settlers cannot live, in 
which it would be wise to settle immigrants from India ; 
and there are many positions in other regions which it 
is to the advantage of everybody that the Indians 
should hold, because there is as yet no sign that sufficient 
numbers of white men are willing to hold them, while 
the native blacks, although many of them do fairly well 
in unskilled labour, are not yet competent to do the 
higher tasks which now fall to the share of the Goanese, 
and Moslem and non* Moslem Indians. The small 
merchants who deal with the natives, for instance, and 
most of the minor railroad officials, belong to these 
latter classes. I was amused, by the way, at one bit 
of native nomenclature in connection with the Goanese. 
Many of the Goanese are now as dark as most of the 
other Indians; but they are descended in the male line 
from the early Portuguese adventurers and conquerors, 
who were the first white men ever seen by the natives 
of this coast. Accordingly, to this day some of the 
natives speak even of the dark-skinned descendants of 
the subjects of King Henry the Navigator as “the 
whites,” designating the Europeans specifically as 
English, Germans, or the like; just as in out-of-the- 
way nooks in the far North-West one of our own red 
men will occasionally be found who still speaks of 
Americans and Englishmen as “ Boston men ” and 
“ King George’s men.” 
One of the Government farms was being run by an 
educated coloured man from Jamaica, and we were 
shown much courtesy by a coloured man from our own 
country who was practising as a doctor. No one could 
fail to be impressed with the immense advance these 
men represented as compared with the native negro; 
and, indeed, to an American, who must necessarily 
