Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/741

Rh supported, are all spacious and all plain even to ugliness. If we enter the buildings, we shall see little more, or in truth nothing whatever, to gratify the artistic sense. Within as without, any approach to ornamentation, not decorative only, but architectural even, is strictly excluded; though whether for reasons of economy or on some abstract principle, I do not know. Perhaps it is a speculative craze, for why should not the Moravians have crazes of their own like other denominations? However, as this fancy, if fancy it be, does not interfere with the practical utility of the constructions, which are cool, roomy, well-aired, and well-kept, want of beauty may be pardoned though deplored. The interior arrangements, too, offer nothing to make a description interesting. A schoolroom, an elementary one especially, is much the same all the world over, whether the scholars be black or white; and the same may be said of a meeting-house and its contents. But as I have already said, they answer the purposes they were intended for, and in addition they really come up to the popular idea. Private dwellings, by African rule of taste, should be small, mere sleeping-covers in fact, with an open verandah or shed tacked on, it may be, but as little construction as possible. Public buildings, on the contrary, cannot be too large. For decoration, the African eye has no great discernment; it appreciates bright colours and their combinations, but that is nearly all. In form, imitative form especially, they are at the very first letter of the art alphabet; nor were the most gifted of their kind, the ancient Egyptians, much further advanced in either respect. What then can be expected from the West-Coast national type? But like the princes of their brotherhood, the light-coloured Africans of the Nile valley, the Congo negro, and the naturalized South-American creole, understand the value of size in architecture as well as Mr. Fergusson himself, though not equally able perhaps to give the reason of the value; and the spacious assembly-room and wide enclosure of a central-African palace, or a Surinam negro meeting-place, are the legitimate though somewhat feeble and degenerate descendants of the giant structures of Carnac.

Cottages and gardens extend far away to the right and left of the open space where stands the central establishment; cocoa-nut trees form a conspicuous and a very agreeable figure in the general landscape. Sir Charles Dilke asserts, correctly, I take for granted, that two hundred thousand acres of Ceylon land are shaded by cocoa-palms, yielding from seven to eight hundred million cocoa-nuts a year, and worth two millions sterling. Amen. There is no reason, or, to put it better, no hindrance, either of climate or soil, to prevent the mainland Dutch settlement of the West from rivalling or excelling in this respect the once Dutch island of the East. Nor is much labour, nor much expense, beyond the first outlay of planting, required. Yet even for these, men and capital are alike wanting. Well, everything has its day; and Surinam, when her time comes, may be the garden of Guiana; she is, for nineteen-twentieths of her extent, more like the shrubbery now.

Meanwhile the current and the boat are bearing us on round another curve of the bank; the glittering plantain-screen and the infinite interlacings of the cocoa-leaves have closed round the green gap with its long-roofed dwellings; last of all, the small painted belfry has, so to speak, been swallowed up among the boughs, and "all the landscape is remade." Here is a remarkably large and handsome residence, with an avenue down to the water's edge, and landing-place to match; the garden, too, and the statues amid its flowers, look more numerous and more fantastic than common; the factory is in good working order; the sheds full of megass, the outhouses stocked — everything betokens a prosperous condition; the negroes at the wharf salute us with flags, popguns, and what they are, pleased to call singing, as we approach. I inquire the name of the place; it is Munnikendam, the governor informs me; adding that the estate is remarkable for the conservative tenacity with which, amid all the changes that have from time to time come over the spirit of the colonial dream, it has maintained old customs, old feelings, old manners and modes of life. Certainly we are now in what may be termed an out-of-the-way corner, not far from the very extreme limits of European habitation, and central influences may have been slow in diffusing them selves by Dutch barges up this secluded winding river. Nevertheless, to my English eye, the busiest districts of the colony, and the capital itself, had already appeared remarkably conservative. Not wholly stationary, for progress there certainly is; but it is progress by line and rule, precept and measure, here a little and there a little; not on the sweeping scale, or by the rapid 