Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/230

Rh Chorus.—Have pity on the white man who has no mother,” &c.

If the women of Africa, in America, and the West Indies sing less beautiful songs, it is no fault of theirs; if their improvisation is fettered like their bodies and souls, it is the fault of the white man.

It is his duty to emancipate them; to let them, by means of the sun of Christian love and education, shoot up like a palm-tree, like a bamboo-arcade from the sun-warmed earth; and then the people of the tropics with their songs and dances may one day correspond with the mild and beautiful scenery of the tropics. And that, too, is like the continued improvisation of a varied, luxuriant summer-life, which, amid its eternal blossoming, might make man almost forget that death is come into the world.

Later in this beautiful evening—one of the most beautiful which I have spent at La Concordia, for the atmosphere was refreshed by the rain, and the full moon ascended beautifully above the white dwelling-house—we sate out of doors and saw the cuculios fluttering about in the air, and the fires shining out from the negroes' bohea. This people cannot live without fire, even in the midst of the greatest heat, and they like to kindle it on the floor in the middle of their room; they contrive to make their beds—a wooden frame, with or without straw—by means of leafy branches and rags, as much like dens as possible, and in these they are fond of lying all in a heap.

Still later I played with those sweet children on the piazza at “lend me your fire-stick,” which is here changed into “tu me da la candela,” which was a novelty to the children, and made them crazy with joy.

I shall set off early in the morning for Havannah, whence, on the 8th of May, I proceed to Charleston by the “Isabel.”

The dance under the almond-tree, and the beautiful