Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/169

Rh little unpicturesque Barbadoes, unpromising in show, unfavoured by nature, yet thriving, prosperous, overstocked, and therefore only prosperous because overstocked, recurred to my mind! Improved machinery, coolies, Chinese, are all of them excellent things each in their way, but they cannot make up for the absence of that one great requisite of all progress, material or social, a superabundant native population. But how is it to be obtained for our own three-quarters-empty islands? How for Guiana? How for Surinam? Many answers have been given, and more may be given yet; but a wholly satisfactory one is yet to seek. We will try our luck at the solution of this problem farther on.

And how our trim little craft is once more on the open sea, bounding from wave to wave as she cleaves her onward way to the east. Sand-banks and mud-banks covered with scarcely more than a fathom-depth of water, kept us out at a considerable distance from the coast; but had we been nearer we should have had little to study except a dull uniform growth of mangrove and parwa trees; the latter not unlike our poplars in shape and foliage. Behind this woody screen lies the district of Coronie, almost the only quarter of Dutch Guiana where cotton, once a favourite speculation, especially about the time of the late American war, is now grown. So far as soil and climate are concerned, there is no assignable reason why it should not be more widely planted; but agriculture and commerce have their vagaries, often not less capricious than those of fashion and dress.

Coronie left behind us, a rougher sea than any we have yet encountered gives us notice that we are passing the joint estuary of the Coppename and Saramacca Rivers, each the main artery of fertile and comparatively-speaking populous regions to the south.

Not far inland by the banks of the Coppename, though shut out from our sight by the forest screen, is a settlement bearing the name of Batavia; and composed exclusively, exception made, I trust, of the government inspector and the doctor, of lepers. A hundred and fifty in number, they employ themselves in field labour; have cottages and gardens of their own, and as the disease is painless, or nearly so, they live on not unhappily their death in life. The motive for keeping them thus apart from every one else is, of course, the idea that their malady is contagious; an idea wide-spread, it is true, but unsupported by scientific testimony; and probably due to the horror and disgust excited by the sight of so loathsome a disorder. Salt fish, the old established slave-diet throughout the West Indies, is not improbably responsible in many cases, if not most, for the disease; though not contagious and hardly even infectious, it is certainly hereditary. Improved diet, and above all fresh articles of food, put a limit to its ravages, and give hopes that with proper precautions it may ultimately disappear.

For my part I am not sorry to miss seeing Batavia, but I must regret the invisibility of Groningen, where, near the mouth of the Saramacca, a colony of European labourers has been established for several years past. It is one of the many attempts made at various times to supplement negro by European field-work; and has, like the German and Irish colonies of Jamaica, and the Portuguese of St. Kitt's, proved a failure in the main; though its inevitable non-success as a farm has to a certain extent been compensated by the gardeners and artisans whom it has supplied to the capital. Something of the same kind has, I believe, taken place elsewhere. Field labour and outdoor life are things, early or late, irreconcilable with European vigour, health, and even existence, in the tropical new world. Nor are they needed there. Of all which also more anon.

A night and a day have passed since we quitted the melancholy relics of Nikerie, and we are yet tossing on the turbid waves several miles from land. This grows monotonous, and great was my delight when on the second evening of our voyage, just as the brief twilight deepened into night, we at last sighted, though still at some distance, the dull gleam of the lightship, anchored several miles out to sea, off the mouth of the Surinam River. Cautiously, for the shoals are many and the current strong, we made for the signs of harbour, known even through the general gloom to our pilot and crew, till about midnight we anchored in smooth water just within the entry of the mighty stream, here over three miles in width, and took shelter behind a long, low, mangrove-covered land-spit running out from the east.

A wan crescent moon hung dimly over the black forest-line, and gleamed on the smooth seaward-flowing water where we lay at anchor, waiting the rise of the tide that would not take place till after daybreak. Not a sign of human habitation, not a sound of beast or bird; only the 