Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/737

Rh or the greater part of their old West-Indian prosperity; and announce themselves accordingly as we sail past, by smoking chimneys, roofs and walls in good repair, and clustering cottages, amid the dense green of cocoa-groves, or the verdant monotony of sugarcanes, only interrupted at regular distances by canal and dyke, or by some long palm-row, planted more for beauty than for profit. In the distance towers a huge cotton-tree, magnificent to look at, but useless else, and chiefly spared to humour negro superstition, that yet brings offerings of food and drink to the invisible power, rather maleficent than otherwise, supposed to reside under its boughs. Or, again, signs of recent additions and improvements, with long white rows of regulation-built cottages, - the tenements of coolies or Chinese, attest fortunes not only maintained but improved by the infusion of "new blood" from the Indian or the Celestial empire. Or a reverse process has taken place; the cane has abdicated in favour of less costly, but also less remunerative rivals; and the white proprietor has made place for a black landowner, or more commonly for several, who now cultivate the land in accordance with their narrow means. Here the emerald monotony of the land is broken; patches of cassava-growth, like an infinity of soft green cupolas, crowded one on the other, and undulating to every breath of air, show chequerwise between acres where the metallic glitter of vigorous plantain leaves, or tall hop-like rows of climbing yam, tell of an unexhausted and seemingly inexhaustible soil. Jotted freely amid the lesser growths, fruit-trees of every kind spread unpruned with a luxuriance that says more for the quantity than the quality of their crop; but this is the tropical rule, and even Dutch gardening-skill is unavailing against the exuberance of growth in climates like these. Meanwhile, the stately residence of the former proprietor, who by the way had in all probability been for many years an absentee, before by a natural result he became a bankrupt — the tradition is a stereotyped one, and recurs every day — has at last been totally abandoned as out of keeping with the simpler requirements of his successors. They content themselves with small cottages half-buried in a medley of flower-bushes, and kitchen-growth close by; though in more than one instance our creole, reverting to the hereditary oriental instinct of ease and how to take it, has built himself on the green margin of some creek or river inlet, a pretty painted kiosk, worthy of finding place among its likenesses on the shores of the Bosphorus or Nile, and answering the same ends. An unroofed factory and ruined chimney close by combine to mark the present phase, a necessary though a transient one, of land-ownership, through which Surinam is passing; a more hopeful one, though less brilliant, than that, of exclusively large estates and costly factories owned by few.

I am again, — for this is not a diary, where everything is put down according to the order in which it occurred, but rather a landscape picture, where I take the liberty of arranging accessories as best may suit convenience or effect, — I am again on board our steamer onward bound with the rest. Sometimes our course lies along the centre of the river, and then we have a general view of either side, far off, but seen in that clearness of atmosphere unknown to the northern climes, which, while it abolishes the effects of distance, creates a curious illusion, making the smallness of the remoter objects appear not relative but absolute. Sharp-edged and bright-coloured in the sun, houses and cottages stand out in an apparent foreground of tree and field; miniature dwellings, among a miniature vegetation; with liliputian likenesses of men and women between. Then, again, we approach one or the other bank; and see! the little palm-model is sixty feet high at least, and the gabled toy-house a large mansion three or four storeys high. And now the fields and gardens reach down to the very brink of the stream, and our approach has been watched by the labourers from far; so that by the time we are gliding alongside, troops of blacks, men and women, the former having hastily slipped on their white shirts, the latter rearranged their picturesque head-kerchiefs of every device and colour, gala-fashion, hurry down to the landing-place for a welcome. Some bear with them little Dutch or fancy flags, others, the children especially, have wild flowers in their hands; two or three instruments of music, or what does duty for them, are heard in the crowd; and a dense group forms, with the eager seriousness befitting the occasion about the two dwarf cannon by the wharfside, which are now banged off amid the triumphant shouts of the one sex and the screams of the other. We, on the deck and paddle-boxes, return the greetings as best we may, the governor waves his hat, fresh shouts 