Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/423

Rh Let them then rest assured that the same system would have no worse result for the east-African negro also.

Enough of this. The subject is one that cannot fail to be taken up sooner or later, not in speculative view, but in experimental practice; till then let it rest. Perhaps the time is not come yet; the very extent of the prospect suggests its distance. But, a little sooner, a little later, not the less surely it will be reached. An African colony, the Arab, has already half peopled the East; an African law, matured in Egypt, promulgated on the shores of the Red Sea, remodelled and re-promulgated in the deserts of the same coast, rules over half Asia this day. Already the Lybian sibyl prepares to turn the next page of her book; its writing is the West. A new creation is wanted here; and creation of this sort is a work not for the European or his half-cousin the Hindoo, it belongs to the elder races. The Aryan of our day, the Indo-German, can elaborate, can perfect, he cannot originate; art-trained, art-exhausted, the productive energy of nature is his no longer. Unmodified by science, unpruned by art, the rough offshoots of the over-teeming African stem are vital with the rude vitality of nature; like her they are prolific too.

Is it a dream? Possibly so; a nature-sent dream, as under the hot sun we float in breezeless calm down the glassy black waters between high walls of reed and forest, bright flowers, broad leaf, and overtopping palm up to the intense heaven all aglow, till here before us on the left river-bank rise the bower-like avenues of Munnikendam. Here let us land, and from the study of the long-settled creole negroes of this secluded estate let us draw, if so disposed, some augury as to what their brethren of the east-African coast, the colonists of our visionary or visioned future, are likely to be in and for South-American Surinam.

This at any rate is no dream. Two hundred and seventeen acres, two hundred and sixty labourers, all without exception negro creole; average yearly produce, seven hundred and fifty hogsheads of sugar, beside molasses and rum; so much for Munnikendam statistics. Machinery of the older and simple sort; factory buildings corresponding; planter's dwelling-house large, old, and three-storied, Dutch in style, with high roof, and fantastic wolves topping the gables by way of weathercocks; a wide double flight of steps in front with a paved space, surrounded by an open parapet before the hall-door; the garden very Dutch in its walks, flower-beds, and statues; long avenues, some of palmiste, some of areka palm, some of almond-trees, with sago palms intermixed; around a green turfy soil, and a crescent background of cane-fields and forests; so much and enough, I think, for general description. Negroes very sturdy, very black, very plainly dressed, or half-dressed, in white and blue; the women rejoicing in variegated turbans; children à la Cupid and Psyche as to costume, though not perhaps in feature, or shape; three or four white men, overseers, straw-hatted, of course lastly, for visitors, the governor and his party, myself included; such are the principal accessories of the picture. Time, from five or so in the afternoon to midnight or thereabouts; we did not very accurately consult our watches.

Night had fallen; but no — this is a phrase well enough adapted, it may be, to the night of the north, the heavy murky veil slowly let down fold after fold over the pale light that has done duty for days — here it is not so; transparent in its starry clearness, its stainless atmosphere, night rises as day had risen before, a goddess succeeding a goddess; not to blot out the fair world, but to enchase it in a black diamond circle in place of a white; to change enchantment for enchantment, the magic of shadow for the magic of light. But I am anticipating. A good hour before sunset the covered barge of the estate had set us ashore on the wharf, where, with flowers in their hands, songs on their lips, smiles on every face, and welcome in every gesture, the boys and girls of the place received us from the stelling. Between this double human range, that like an inner and more variegated avenue lined the overarching trees from the water's edge up to the dwelling-house, we passed along, while the merry tumult of the assembled crowd, and the repeated discharge of the small cannon planted at the landing-place and in the garden mingled, together to announce and greet our arrival. The warm although almost level sunbeams lit up the red brick lines of the central mansion, the tall tower-like factory chimneys, the statues in the garden, the pretty bush-embosomed cottages of the estate, and tipped with yellow gold the plumy cane-fields beyond. This lasted some time, till the sun set, and for a little while all was orderly and still in the quiet evening light.

But soon night had risen, and with her had risen the white moon, near her full,