Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/176

166 twice a week; and where, in the absence of musical attractions, cool air, pleasant walks, free views, and the neighbourhood of the river, draw crowds of loungers, especially of the middle and even upper classes. But in truth, for a couple of hours, or near it, every road, every street, is full of comers and goers, and loud with talk and laughter. For the negro element, a noisy one, predominates over all, even within the capital itself; the Dutch, though rulers of the land, are few, and other Europeans fewer still. Indeed, a late census gave the total number of whites in the town, the soldiers of the fort included, but little over a thousand. As to Indians, the pure-blooded ones of their kind have long since abandoned the neighbourhood of Paramaribo, and now seldom revisit the locality to which two centuries past they gave a name; a few half-breeds, with broad oval faces and straight black hair, alone represent the race. Bush negroes, in genuine African nudity, may be seen in plenty from the river wharfs; but they seldom leave their floating houses and barges to venture on shore, though common sense has for some time past relaxed the prudish regulations of former times, according to which no unbreeked male or unpetticoated female was permitted to shock the decorum of Paramaribo promenades. Coolies and Chinese, too, though now tolerably numerous on the estates — where, indeed, about five thousand of them are employed — are rarely to be met with in the streets of the captal; which in this respect offers a remarkable contrast to Georgetown and Port of Spain, where the mild Hindoo meets you at every turning with that ineffable air of mixed self-importance and servility that a Hindoo alone can assume, and Chinamen and women make day hideous with the preternatural ugliness of what flattery alone can term their features. The absence of these beauties here may be explained partly by the recentness of their introduction into the Dutch colony, where they are still bound by their first indentures to field-work, and consequently unable as yet to display their shop-keeping talents; partly by the number and activity of the negro creole population which has preoccupied every city berth. Of all strangers, only the irrepressible Barbadian, with the insular characteristics of his kind fresh about him, has made good his footing among the Surinam grog-shops and wharfs, where he asserts the position due to his ready-handed energy, and keeps it too. But the diversity between the Barbadoes negro and his kinsman of the neighbouring islands, or of the main, is one rather of expression and voice than of clothes and general bearing, and hence may readily pass unnoticed in the general aspect of a crowd.

However diversified the species, the genus is one. Watch the throng as it passes: the kerchief-turbaned, loose-garmented market-woman; the ragged porter and yet more ragged boatman; the gardener with his cartful of yams, bananas, sweet potatoes, and so forth; the white-clad shop clerk and writer, the straw-hatted salesman, the umbrella-bearing merchant, sailors, soldiers; policemen quaintly dressed, as policemen are by prescriptive right everywhere, except in sensible, practical Demerara; officials, aides-de-camp, high and low, rich and poor, one with another, and you will see that through and above this variety of dress, occupation, rank, colour even, there runs a certain uniformity of character — a something in which all participate, from first to last.

A few exceptions, indeed, there are; but they are confined almost exclusively to the white colonists; and among them, even, the anomalies are few. In general, one pattern comprehends the entire category of white colonists, men and women, gentle and simple; and it is an eminently self-contained, self-consistent pattern, the Dutch. Steady in business, methodical in habit, economical in expenditure, liberal in outlay, hospitable in entertainment, cheerful without flightiness, kindly without affectation, serious without dulness, no one acquainted, even moderately, with the mother country, can fail to recognize the genuine type of the Hague in the colonial official, and that of Maestricht or Amsterdam in the business population of Paramaribo. This indeed might have been fairly anticipated; the steady, unimpressionable Dutchman being less subject to — what shall we call it? — equatorization, than the soon-demoralized Spaniard or lighter Portuguese. It is a matter of more surprise, an agreeable surprise, when we find much that recalls to mind the Dutch peasantry and labouring classes, distinctly traceable among the corresponding classes of creole negroes throughout the delta of Surinam. By what influence is it — attraction, sympathy, or master-ship — that some nations so eminently succeed in transforming the acquired subjects of whatever race into copies, and occasionally caricatures, of themselves, while other nations not less signally fail in doing so? That Frenchmen, however 