to a watery consistence, but, as an Irishman, Mr. Temple ought to know this better than us. The Peruvians are a healthy, strong, Jaborious race, of a similar character as to features with the rest of the American family, but varying in shades of colour from the snowy ridge to the low valleys. They are exceedingly attached to those who treat them with kindness; Mr. Temple says, that when travelling in defenceless solitude, "these poor people are the most harmless beings upon earth, in whose doorless huts we may lay ourselves down to sleep, with a confidence that bolts and bars do not else where always ensure." He found them, he says, always ready from sheer benevolence to cede to him, when weary and faint, the only little store they possessed. The Peruvians, like every uneducated people, are very superstitious; but all their superstitions are not their own, many of them having been inculcated by their instructors in the Christian religion. The clergy appear to be more hospitable to travellers than in Mexico. "The stranger, on entering a village, has only to ask," says Mr. Temple, "Where is the house of the Father Curate?" and on saluting him with "Good morrow to you, Señor Cura;" a smile of welcome, with a few words of kindness, and a shake of the hand, "establishes you, in nine cases out of ten, with as much ease and freedom as in your own house." Sometimes, however, the Padre himself is but very miserably accommodated. In one place, our traveller found the curate's house such as, in Connaught, would be called a very good cabin, with a mud bench against the wall, to serve as a chair, and a square mud-built heap near it, doing permanent duty as a table; yet excellent mutton (lama) broth was served up in large silver dishes, and drinking-cups of the same metal stood in the sill of the window; "and," says he, "when I asked for water, to wash my hands before dinner, it was brought to me by the ama in a capacious utensil, also of silver; certain prejudices, however, induced me politely to decline availing myself of it for that purpose, which not a little surprised the ama, who assured me that the curate never used anything else." The holiday of the " Elevation of the Cross" having been celebrated in the village, a great concourse of people of both sexes had assembled, of whom the good cura accommodated as many as his Connaught hut would contain, with a night's lodging. A large church taper being placed in the middle of the floor, our traveller says, " by its glare, I counted seventeen persons, male and female, some of them most fantastically dressed, reposing and preparing for repose. The men laid themselves down just as they came in and chanced to find a vacant space upon the floor. The females all said an

Ave-maria, told their beads, crossed themselves, and undressed; then, placing their thickly-quilted petticoats for a bed, they also lay down sans cérémonie as they best could, covering themselves with their shawls:

"There they were, the girls and boys,
As thick as hasty-pudding.'

And here we must drop the curtain over the warmth of our traveller's description of the charms of the Chola girls, simple village maids," with whom the gallant captain seems to have been enraptured. These Cholas are the mixed descendants of Spaniards and Peruvians. Many of them are described as very handsome, with fine figures, and countenances full of animation, and most pleasing feminine expression. Their raven locks are of most luxuriant growth, on which they bestow much pains, and nothing will tempt even those in humble life to part with them. Mr. Temple in vain offered two ounces of gold (between six and seven pounds) for a head of hair, a sum that would have been most acceptable to the humble owner. Their ear-rings of gold are so ponderous as to require being supported by a golden chain, which passes over the head. Their full-plaited petticoats, containing from twelve to fourteen yards of rich velvet or satin, trimmed with ribands of gaudy colours, or festoons of artificial flowers, far exceed in protuberance and in extent of rotundity, the stuffing out which our modern élégantes employ to acquire the desired degree of embonpoint.

Mr. Temple is evidently well pleased with the country and the people of South America, and is a strong advocate for encouraging emigration, particularly from Ireland, to the provinces of Cordova, Salta, and Tarija, the beauty and fertility of which he describes in raptures.

SKETCHES OF THE WEST INDIES.+

PEOPLE do not go to balls night after night, or even week after week, in the tropics, with impunity. Many a man, by dancing, drinking, and dissipation, has provoked the attack of that which has effectually prevented him from dancing, drinking, or dissipating more. Many a young and fairy being, many a lovely, innocent, and smiling creole, has gained in the merry dance, in that exhilarating whirl, which fills her eye with animation, and her heart with joyousness, that which has borne her, in her beauty and her bloom, away to an early grave. The dis

From Four Years' Residence in the West Indies. By F. W. N. Bayley. London, 1830.

eases of the Western Isles leave the invalid but little time for penitence or reflection. In the short space of three days, the fever which rages in the brain, and burns in the blood of the victim, is either defeated and defied by the hardy vigour of a young and healthful constitution, or extinguished by the cold and clammy touch of death. To day I dine with the strong and healthy; tomorrow I follow him to his home of homes. The grim skeleton, however, is usually more lenient to the old inhabitants than to the new comers. It is the seasoning fever that does the work of death. It is this that the afflicted father curses with the curse of bitterness; over this does the mother mourn in the tenderness of her grief. But I have seen a hundred of the aged who have passed their grand climacterics. Sixty, seventy, eighty years, have rolled over their hoary heads, and they are now on the high road to a hundred; and yet they show no signs of dying. They live on in the hardihood of their health, in spite of the sighing of their relatives, and the impatience of their heirs. In the West Indies, custom reconciles us to the sight of death, as it does in England to the sight of misery. And yet that same fever, I mean the scarlet, is a terrible enemy to wrestle with, and there are few who survive the combat. In the West Indies, how ever, any fever is bad enough, and I think the "seasoner" is as bad as any. I had one in Barbadoes, that thinned and weakened me; another in St. Vincent, that nearly kilt me, and a third in Grenada, that nearly killed me.

[The distinctions and shades of society in the West Indies are scarcely intelligible to an European who has not visited those regions. There is first the samboe, who is the child of a mulatto father and a negro mother, or vice versa; next in order of remove from the black is the mulatto, who is the child of a white man and a negro woman; the third is called the quadroon, being the offspring of a white man and a mulatto mother; supposing the quadroon to have a child by a white man, it would be called a mustee; a mustee by a white man, it would be called a mustiphini; a mustiphini by a white man, it would be a quintroon. This is the last shade of slavery, for the child of a quintroon by a white woman is free in the eye of the law. All the grades, however they may be mingled, pass under the general appellation of coloured people.]

If I accord the palm of female beauty to the ladies of colour, I do not at the same time deteriorate the attraction of the fairer creoles; the stately and graceful demeanour which calls upon us to admire the one, does not forbid us to be fascinated by the modest loveliness of the other; yet I will acknowledge that I prefer the complexion that is tinged, if not too darkly, with all the rich

ness of the olive, to the face which, however fair in its paleness, can never look as lovely as when it wore the rose-blush of beauty which has faded away. I know no prettier scene than a group of young and handsome coloured girls taking their evening walk along the moonlit avenues of mountain cabbage-trees, which are generally found in the vicinity of the West India towns. They are extremely fond of dress, and make their toilet with much taste and extravagance. I do not, however, think their love of dress would yield to their love of pleasure, for though the climate inclines them (and every body else) to be lazy and languishing to a miracle, yet they have a high flow of spirits, and a natural liveliness of disposition, which enables them to dance, and play, and romp, and enjoy themselves with as much gaiety of heart as their fairer sisters on the hills of Albion. With all this, they have much to answer for, for I do wisely opine, that they are the grand cause of much of the immorality that prevails in the West Indies; although I will endeavour to lighten the load of blame that lies upon their fair (or rather dark) shoulders to the best of my poor ability. All the world know (and it would be well if they did not) that many (for the sake of charity and chastity, I will not say all) of the managers on the estates, and residents in the towns of the tropics, have sacrificed all their national morality at the shrine of a deceased philosopher, and formed a very improper liason d'amour in lieu of that very proper liason de marriage—“ that binds so firmly, and that wears so well"with various olive-coloured divinities, who "love them for themselves alone," and take the greatest possible care of their legitimate homes and of their illegitimate children. Now all this is a great bore, and causes more trouble to moral authors and respectable clergymen, than the reader has any idea of; and while the practice exists (and, God knows, I think it will exist for ever in some places), there will be little chance of reforming the morals of the worthy inhabitants of the Antilles. The custom I have alluded to arises from three causes, first and principally, from slavery, which has a bias upon every thing connected with it. Secondly, from the attractive powers of the male buckras-British, Scotch, and Irish; and, thirdly, from the proud and haughty spirit of the coloured ladies themselves. Generally speaking, they look down (and very unjustly) with a feeling of contempt on men of their own colour, who are in rank, wealth, and situation of life, fairly on a level with themselves; and rather than live with them a virtuous and inoffensive life, they prefer dwelling with a white man in a state of moral degradation: again, the mulatto, finding himself despised by women of his own colour, is obliged to seek a companion among

:

those of a darker hue; and he, in his turn, deeming her unworthy to be his wife, will only maintain her in the condition of a concubine. It is thus that profligacy and immorality, beginning in the dwelling of the proprietor, descend to the hovel of the slave, and are everywhere practised, though they are everywhere condemned. The change in this system, which it would be so desirable to effect, must be, like emancipation, gradual; and yet I think the method is simple, and will do its work rapidly, although it will have to contend with strong and established prejudices, and the mighty influences of long custom and habit. In my opinion, it is to he effected by that liberal spirit, in the minds of those who compose the legislature of the several colonies, which will induce them to grant to the coloured men those privileges (many would term them rights) which they are anxious to enjoy, and certainly not unworthy to obtain. The coloured man is a being essentially differing from the slave proud of heart, independent in spirit, valuing freedom, if it be possible, more than Englishmen value it, because he is living in a land of slavery; ambitious, industrious, anxious to acquire knowledge, and often self-educated to a surprising degree, tenacious of his rights, decided in his character, loyal to his king, looking with a jealous eye upon his white brethren, seeking to be elevated to the same level, and desirous of moving in the same rank; fierce when stimulated to action, but too peaceable to attack without an injury; looking down with scorn, often a cruel scorn, upon his dependents and inferiors, and hardly acknowledging, even to himself, the periority of those above him; firm in his principles of religion, willing to receive instruction, and to listen with attention to precepts that may tend, either to enlighten his ignorance, or increase his knowledge; striving to maintain, always, a respectable appearance, and to gain, by honest industry, that which will enable him to vie, in point of exterior, with the whites. Such a character fits him for the enjoyment of many privileges; and, provided his ambition be limited within proper bounds, to grant him those privileges would be to make him a good citizen, and give him an importance in the eyes of women of colour, which would go far towards effecting a most desirable object; I mean the encouragement of marriage between them, and the weakening of those motives which induce the coloured women to live in immorality with a white protector. If from religion she were to learn the impropriety of such a connexion, and from experience the happiness of a legitimate union with one of her own rank, (provided that rank were elevated, and rendered more important by the privileges I have alluded to), she would hardly, I think,

su

when her vanity was once satisfied, sacrifice the advantages of the latter to the disadvantages of the former state. Therefore, to encourage the marriages between coloured people-which would, assuredly, take place oftener, if the men possessed those privileges which would give them an importance sufficient to satisfy the vanity of the women

and to discourage those connexions which custom has established, and which the principles of religion must overthrow, must, I think, be the first object of those who really seek to lay the foundation of something like a moral system in the West Indies. I do not deny that the task is difficult, or that the undertaking is great, but still I think it may be gradually accomplished if properly begun. The grants to the coloured people of Grenada have already produced good effect. In that island, the class to which I allude are a most respectable and estimable body of men, and eminently deserving of all they have obtained. They are looked upon with less prejudice, their grants are more numerous, their wealth more considerable, their privileges more extensive, and their usefulness more perceived, than in any other island. Several of them are merchants, and have extensive stores in the town, and nearly all of them have received (or given themselves, which sufficiently proves their ambition to know) an education little inferior to that of many men who have been brought up in the public schools of England; and, at all events, greatly above that of one-half of the white overseers, and even managers, on estates in the country. The public papers, in one or two islands, are conducted by persons of this class, and the proprietor, and sole editor, of the "St. George's Chronicle" is a worthy young man of colour. Grenada, the ladies of colour have not shown themselves behind the men in their progress in civilization: they are, generally speaking, better educated than their sisters in the other colonies, and many of them can play on the piano, and sing with very fair execution. They have also, to their credit, acquired a better character for morality and religion; they are regular in their attendance at church, and are not unfrequent guests at the communion table : they already discourage the immoral connections, of which they are themselves the offspring, and seek a more legitimate union

In

marriage, with white men it is true, but still marriage. Many of my countrymen have been induced to enter with them the temple of Hymen, and I shall marvel not to hear that more have followed their example.

Literature in the West Indies is at a low ebb. Booksellers are hardly known, and books little patronized. Reading is by no means a favourite amusement among the inhabitants. Many of the planters and private

gentlemen have tolerable libraries, and superb book-cases to contain them; but I am inclined to think that the valuable volumes, cased, as they generally are, in gilt calf or Russia, are more for ornament than use; they contribute to furnish the rooms, but very little to improve the under standing of the West Indians; the fact is, the climate is too hot for study, and their minds are too much fatigued with the cares of business, to lead them to seek for relaxation in any but very light reading, and very little even of that. Were I asked, I should give it as my opinion, that the coloured people read more than any other class of inhabitants in the Antilles. They have an innate desire for information, and a wish to acquire knowledge, which is always most praiseworthy, and is very often most successful. The publications printed in the West Indies are seldom any other than newspapers and almanacks. There are a few book societies in the Antilles, founded for the very laudable purpose of procuring from England for the amusement of the fair creoles, all the new novels of the day; but I apprehend that the vast numbers monthly poured forth by those giants of the publishing world, Messrs. Colburn and Bentley, and others, will reduce those ladies to content themselves with choosing only the good ones; par example, "The Man of the World," the " Exclusives," the "Manners of the Day"-" Paul Clifford," and a few others. In the West Indies, though, as I have before said, the field open to the talented is not a wide one, yet there are many persons of first-rate ability, whose productions are perhaps little known, and therefore little valued.

Dress in the West Indies is seldom studied by any but the fairer sex. The young gentlemen of the tropics do not imitate the beau ideals of dandyism who are daily wont to stroll in Regent Street, the Quadrant, the Burlington, and the Bond. They are content to be dressed plainly and well. White is the standard suit, being lighter and cooler than any other, and more adapted to the climate. The ladies, however, are, I think, fond of a variety of colours, and the ribands which arrive from France, vià Martinique, furnish them with "numbers numberless." A great fancy for bijouterie is also the foible or the forte of the fair creoles, and they show much taste in their choice of these "trifles which cost to trifle." The slaves and free blacks have a great rage for dress, and will scruple at no means to obtain it; but, in my opinion, the ladies of colour excel all the rest in taste and tact, and stand unrivalled in the art of adorning their persons. "Les modes de Paris," and "le Petit Courier des Dames," are as much studied by the ladies of the tropics as by the fair daughters of Albion, and large sleeves,

large bonnets, and fringe flounces are as much in vogue in the Antilles as in this city of cities. The dressmakers are all very clever and very extravagant, but I believe that les petits modistes of Barbados and Trinidad are deemed superior to those of the smaller islands. There are few places of public entertainment in these islands, and the societies are usually obliged to seek for amusement among themselves and in their own gay parties. In some of the colonies there are amateur theatres, but the acting, though tolerable, is seldom brought to any degree of perfection.

Water drinkers are a class of people by. no means numerous in the Antilles, and yet there are a few who arrive in these hot islands with a determination to drink no wine. This is a resolution which I would recommend to none. Living too low is almost as bad as living too high; and in the enervating and weakening climate of the West Indies, it is highly necessary to take sufficient to support nature, and keep up the strength of the constitution, without going to excess. The wine is generally good, especially the Madeira; and when taken moderately, cannot produce bad effects. Water drinkers in the tropics are usually obliged to change their habit: they find that their beverage, even though it may have passed through a dripstone, which has made it very pure and very cool, is nevertheless of a nature likely to engender dysentery, cholera morbus, and other tropical diseases.

Obeah, or the detestable practice of spells, formerly existed to a great degree among the negroes, but it is now fast disappearing, and, I have no doubt, will shortly be extinct. It was first introduced into our colonies by the Africans, who have their minds filled with superstition. The many who once executed these spells were called Obi people, and pretended to be able to cause the death of all those who offended them by catching their shadows. Had they only pretended, it would have been well, but their pretensions were often fatally put into practice, and the number of negroes lost on the various estates, in the different islands, rendered it necessary that the legislature should take it into consideration. There is no doubt but that the catching the shadows of their victims, or holding them spellbound, was only a false pretence invented by the Obi_men_for_murdering them by sinister means. Mr. Barclay, who was present at the trial of a notorious Obeah man on a plantation in Jamaica, tells us that

one of the witnesses, a negro belonging to the same estate, was asked, "Do you know the prisoner to be an Obeah man ?""Yes, Massa; shadow catcher true.""What do you mean by a shadow catcher?" -"him ha coffin" (a little coffin produced),

"him set for catch dem shadow."-"What shadow do you mean?"" When him set Obeah for summary" (somebody) "him catch dem shadow and dem go dead;" and too surely they were soon dead when he pretended to have caught their shadows, by whatever means it was effected. The practice of it, is now made punishable by death.

I WAS NOT FALSE TO THEE.

I WAS not false to thee, and yet
My cheek alone look'd pale;
My weary eye was dim and wet,
My strength began to fail.

Thou wert the same; thy looks were gay,
Thy step was light and free;
And yet, with truth, my heart can say,
I was not false to thee!

I was not false to thee, yet now
Thou hast a cheerful eye;

With flushing cheek and drooping brow,
I wander mournfully.

I hate to meet the gaze of men,
I weep where none can see;
Why do I only suffer, when

I was not false to thee?

I was not false to thee; yet, oh!

How scornfully they smile,

Who see me droop, who guess my woe,

Yet court thee all the while.

'Tis strange! but when long years are past,
Thou wilt remember me;
Whilst I can feel until the last,
I was not false to thee!

Honourable Mrs. Norton.

SUMMER THOUGHTS AND RAMBLES.+

VERY few people know what to do with themselves when they go into the country. They see a great quantity of blue sky, and several large hills, and a good number of trees, and some fields of grass, and some of corn; and now and then the odour of a bean-field, or a bed of wild violets, takes

their olfactory nerves by surprise, and they snuff it up pleasantly enough, and pass on with their hands in their pockets. Birds, too-curious little specks, far up in the sunlight, or unseen in the woods-pour forth the countless songs of their merry hearts, as if they enjoyed a polite happiness in seeing such respectable members of society sauntering through the green lanes; and the respectable members of society, hearing the birds, are rather pleased as otherwise, and, after saying nothing, go home to dinner, and take an additional

From the Edinburgh Literary Journal. No. LXXXIX.

tumbler, and play backgammon, and go to bed, and sleep very soundly beside the amiable and rather corpulent mother of their large and promising family. Next morning, their wife makes excellent tea, and gives them plenty of rolls and buttered toast, and then they go into the garden and eat gooseberries, and pluck a full-blown rose, and look at the bee-hives, and wonder if the apples are as sour as they were yesterday, and sit down in the arbour and become gradually somnolent, and are greatly tormented by a persevering blue-bottle that buzzes close about their ear, and occasionally settles upon the tip of their nose; and they at length become indignant, and start up, and depart they know not whither.

This is the common mode of enjoying the country, and, no doubt, a very excellent one; yet does it hardly suit our taste. In the first place, it seems to us that no one can be happy in the country, as a Christian and a gentleman ought to be, who fixes his head-quarters any where within twenty miles of a place where there is an established concourse of summer visitors; a watering-place, for instance, or any such hideous abomination. A mineral well, with its sulphureous rottenness of taste, and crowd of scrofulous decrepitudes assembled in the pump-room, is a sight sufficient to throw the goddess of romance into hysterics, startling her more than ever the daughter of Ceres was startled at the violence of Pluto. A true lover of nature ought to have no head-quarters. He ought to ramble up and down like the birds of passage now breathing inspiration on the mountain's peak, and now following in his skiff" the golden path of rays" that glance and flicker on the bosom of the lake: at one time, alone and far away in the bloodstained solitudes of Glencoe-at another, tracking the rein-deer through the forest of Martindale down to the wooded banks of

Ullswater.

Let no man go to the country expressly to fish or shoot: let him fish when he comes to a splendid stream or living loch, and shoot when the moor lies in his way, and the birds rise gloriously on the wing, as him pretend to be a votary of nature in all if they deserved to be shot. But never let

her presence with a mind intent only upon a lines, or an imagination filled with detonating pocket-book of fly-hooks, gut, and castingcaps, hair-triggers, percussion locks, pointers, and double barrels. No one loves angling more than we do-no one can carry a gun will not do to maintain that there is much or follow a dog more unweariedly; but it poetry in either pursuit, or, at least, that poetical associations and reveries can ever be indulged in during the hour of excitement, when a fish of three pound weight seems worth a king's ransom, and a black

her moods and aspects, and yet go forth into