10 DOTTINGS ON THE ROADSIDE. [Chap. I.—B. S. 
to warrant the apprehension of the cook ; and in most 
other countries they would, but in the West Indies 
it would have been perfectly useless to attempt to pro¬ 
secute the man. He would probably have been tried 
by a black,, or two-thirds black, jury, and even, in the 
face of much stronger evidence than could have been 
adduced, he would certainly have been acquitted.” 
I remember a Jamaica magistrate, with whom I 
came home a few years ago, told me a similar story. 
His little daughter had been poisoned by a woman- 
cook, who took umbrage at his refusal to allow the 
cook’s daughter to accompany the family when going 
out of town; and, from other statements I could men¬ 
tion, I am inclined to believe that there is much secret 
poisoning going on wherever there is a mixed popu¬ 
lation of black and white. 
That the two races will ever live harmoniously to¬ 
gether on a footing of equality seems to me an Uto¬ 
pian idea. In all tropical countries the whites must 
naturally be in the minority; and unless they can con¬ 
trive by some means or other to exist there in the 
capacity of masters, they must go to the wall. The 
upshot of every revolution throughout Spanish America 
and the "West Indies has been to bring the black element 
more and more to the surface. At first the negroes 
and half-castes combine against the pure whites ] and 
whenever the latter have been driven from power 
and decimated, the blacks turn against the half-castes. 
This has been the result pre-eminently in Venezuela 
and St. Domingo, two magnificent countries, now sunk 
as low politically and socially as it is possible for any 
country to sink. 
