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 whiteclad shop clerk and writer, the strawhatted salesman, the umbrella-bearing merchant, sailors, soldiers; policemen quaintly dressed, as policemen are by prescriptive right everywhere, except in sensible, practical Demerara; officials, aidesde-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. twice a week; and where, in the absence | Barbadoes negro and his kinsman of the of musical attractions, cool air, pleasant neighbouring islands, or of the main, is walks, free views, and the neighbourhood one rather of expression and voice than of the river, draw crowds of loungers, of clothes and general bearing, and hence especially of the middle and even upper may readily pass unnoticed in the general classes. But in truth, for a couple of aspect of a crowd. 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 A few exceptions, indeed, there are; and barges to venture on shore, though but they are confined almost exclusively common sense has for some time past to the white colonists; and among them, relaxed the prudish regulations of former even, the anomalies are few. In general, times, according to which no unbreeked one pattern comprehends the entire catemale or unpetticoated female was permit- gory of white colonists, men and women, ted to shock the decorum of Paramaribo gentle and simple; and it is an eminently promenades. Coolies and Chinese, too, self-contained, self-consistent pattern, the though now tolerably numerous on the Dutch. Steady in business, methodical - where, indeed, about five thou-in habit, economical in expenditure, libersand of them are employed-are rarely al in outlay, hospitable in entertainment, to be met with in the streets of the capi- cheerful without flightiness, kindly withtal; which in this respect offers a remark- out affectation, serious without dulness, no able contrast to Georgetown and Port of one acquainted, even moderately, with the Spain, where the mild Hindoo meets you mother country, can fail to recognize the at every turning with that ineffable air of genuine type of the Hague in the colonial mixed self-importance and servility that a official, and that of Maestricht or AmsterHindoo alone can assume, and Chinamen dam in the business population of Paraand women make day hideous with the maribo. This indeed might have been preternatural ugliness of what flattery fairly anticipated; the steady, unimpresalone can term their features. The ab- sionable Dutchman being less subject to sence of these beauties here may be ex- - what shall we call it? equatorization, plained partly by the recentness of their than the soon-demoralized Spaniard or introduction into the Dutch colony, where lighter Portuguese. It is a matter of they are still bound by their first inden- more surprise, an agreeable surprise, when tures to field-work, and consequently un- we find much that recalls to mind the able as yet to display their shop-keeping Dutch peasantry and labouring classes,✓ talents; partly by the number and activity distinctly traceable among the correspond of the negro creole population which has ing classes of creole negroes throughout preoccupied every city berth. Of all the delta of Surinam. By what influence strangers, only the irrepressible Barba- is it attraction, sympathy, or masterdian, with the insular characteristics of ship-that some nations so eminently 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 estates - 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 in particular he passed that pleasant evening, at whose table he shared that copious meal, breakfast, dinner, or supper; where it was that he admired the fine old china and massive plate; under which roof the hostess smiled most courteously, the host conversed with most good-nature and good sense. After all, "Si vis ut redameris, ama" holds good in every age and land; and if the Dutch colonists and creoles of Surinam are universally popular, it is because they have been at the pains of earning popularity, which, like other good things, has its price, and is worth it too. much they may annoy those they annex | in remembering, when endeavouring to reby their incurable habit of administrative call to mind the events of his stay in the over-meddling, yet make, not always in- Surinam capital, at which citizen's house deed obedient subjects of France, but anyhow Frenchmen and Frenchwomen out of those they rule, is a fact attested everywhere, and one that will long remain to grieve German hearts in Alsace and Lorraine. How long ago is it since the tricolor has been hauled down to make place for the union-jack at St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Dominica, and Trinidad? Yet in each of these and their kindred isles the French impress still survives, uneffaced as yet by change and time. Much in the same way to run through the list of other national annexations or conquests: Brazil is not merely ruled by a Portuguese emperor, but is Portuguese itself; and even the revolted Spanish colonies are Spanish in almost everything but official allegiance to this day. On the contrary, who ever heard of a land Germanized by the Germans, however influential their settlers, and absolute their rule? And is there the remotest prospect that the Hindoo, though reconciled by sheer self-interest to toleration of the most equitable rule that ever race exercised over race, will ever become not merely an English subject, but an Englishman in ways and heart? Still more complete has been the failure of Danish attempts at extra-national assimilation, in whatever land or age, from the days of Ethelred to our own. But, indeed, where there is diversity of blood, mistrust and antipathy are more easily accounted for than sympathy and unison. To return to our Dutch friends. How it may be with them elsewhere, in Java for instance, I know not; here, on the Guiana coast, they have almost outdone the French in assimilative results; a problem of which the solution must be sought, partly in history, partly in actual observation. Our best opportunity for the latter will be when visiting the country districts farther up the river. among the estates. Meanwhile let us linger yet a little in Paramaribo itself; and here among the European townsmen, their visitor will find everywhere, so he be one that deserves to find, a pleasant uniformity of unostentatious but cordial welcome, of liberal entertainment, of thoughtful and rational hospitality, attentive to the physical, and not neglectful of the mental requirements of the guest; whatever, in a word, he would meet with, though under a different aspect, on the shores of the Yssel or the Waal. Indeed he might even have some difficulty Much the same, proportion and circumstances taken into account, may be said of the black creoles of Dutch Guiana. The evils and degradation inseparable from slavery were not, it is true, wanting here, but in spite of these unfavourable antecedents the Surinam negro has amply proved by his conduct, both before and during emancipation, that he had learnt from his white masters lessons of steadiness, of order, of self-respect, of quiet industry, of kindliness even, not indeed alien from his own native character, but too often unpractised elsewhere. And thus the exslave has, with a rapidity of change to which, I believe, no parallel can be found in the history of any other West-Indian colony, blended into national, and even, within certain limits, into social unison with his masters; a unison so little impaired by the inevitable, however involuntary rivalry consequent on differences, some artificial indeed but some immanent, of caste and race, as to afford the best hopes for the future of the entire colony. It is remarkable that even the terrible servile wars, which lasted with hardly an interruption for sixty entire years, that is from 1715 to 1775, and not only checked the prosperity, but even more than once menaced the very existence of the colony, should have passed and left behind them no trace, however slight, of hostile feeling or memory among the negro popula tion, whether slave or free; that no outbreak, like those of Jamaica, St. Croix, and so many other neighbouring colonies, here followed or anticipated emancipation, though delayed in Surinam till 1863; and more remarkable yet, that no discontent interfered with the compulsory though paid labour of the ten years following. Slavery quietly faded into apprenticeship, apprenticeship into freedom; and in a land where riot and revolt would have a but dilapidated Lungarno; or have at Genoa seen the contrast of those times between the palatial loneliness of Strada Babbi and the pretty grove-embosomed villas of recent commercial date, they might, under all local differences of circumstance and colouring, recognize something not dissimilar in both the meaning implied and effect produced in this transatlantic capital of Dutch Guiana. better chance than anywhere else of success, that chance was never embodied in act. Facts like these speak certainly well for the creole blacks, but if attentively considered, they speak even better in favour of their white masters. Our present business is, however, not with these last, but with the negro creoles, as they show themselves in the capital, where they muster five or six to one among the entire population. Cheerful contentment The actual and immediate cause of is the prevailing expression of every decadence is a very common one, by no dusky face, whether turned towards you in means peculiar to Paramaribo or Surinam : friendly morning greeting as the busy want of capital. Here, however, that swarm presses on talking, laughing, jest- want is in a certain sense doubled by the ing, along the highways to the market and circumstance that not only are the means quay; or in the afternoon gatherings on of the colony itself insufficient to its needs, the parade-ground, under the avenues, and but that there is no satisfactory prospect alongside of the river-banks. You watch, of an adequate supply from without. It and soon cease to wonder that the official is, I might almost say, the condition of a statistics of Paramaribo, while enumerat- man indigent at home, and friendless out ing and classifying its twenty-two thou- of doors. The home poverty is readily sand inhabitants, make no distinctive accounted for. It began with invasions, headings of colour or race. I wish many resistances, foreign occupations, treatyanother West - Indian town could with embarrassments, and the other war-beequal good reason permit themselves a gotten ills of the troublous years that like omission. closed the last and opened the present century. Followed next the_evil days already alluded to, evil for Transatlantic colonies everywhere; and, in consequence of the hostilities of 1833 between France and Holland, doubly evil for Surinam. Then came emancipation, long and unwisely deferred till financial exhaustion had reached its lowest depths; and with all these the appalling conflagration of 1821, followed by one scarce less destructive in 1832; commercial difficulties of every kind; the fatal yellow-fever epidemic of 1851; in a word, a whole Pandora's box of adversities opened for Dutch Guiana in a scarce less disastrous profusion than for Jamaica herself. And thus, to revert to the more special topic of this chapter, Paramaribo was brought low indeed, almost to the very gates of death; and her condition, as we this day see her, is that of a patient recovering from a long and dangerous illness, and weak, not indeed with the weakness of actual disease, but the weakness of convalescence. Glossy, however, as the surface may be, there is a wrong side of the stuff; and to this we must now turn our attention. Though a comfortable and, so far at least as the majority of its indwellers are concerned, a contented town, Paramaribo cannot, if compared, say with Georgetown or Bridgetown, Kingston, or even Port d'Espagne, take rank as exactly prosperous or progressive. True, the streets of the creole quarters of the city are constantly extending themselves; there new rows of small neat dwellings, each with gay garden and well-stocked provision-ground, spring up year by year, but in the commercial and what may in a general way be termed the European quarter of the town, large half-empty stores, tall neglected-looking houses, a prevailing want of fresh repair, here deficient paint, there broken woodwork, besides a certain general air of listlessness verging on discouragement, and an evident insufficiency of occupation not from want of will but of means, all combine to give an appearance of stagnation suggestive of "better days" for the European colonists at least, in the past, and contrasting almost painfully with the more thriving back streets and suburbs beyond. If any of my readers have visited Italy in the sad bygone years when Italy was a geographical name only, and there compared, as they may well have done, the trim "Borghi" of grand-ducal Florence with her stately Nor is that convalescence likely to be a rapid one. With Jamaica, we know, it has been otherwise; but then Jamaica is the child of a parent alike vigorous and wealthy, able to chastise, able also to assist. Not so with Dutch Guiana. In more than one respect the good-will of Holland exceeds her power; and her comparatively recent severance from Belgium, a political gain, was yet a financial loss. Besides, Java is a more popular name by far in the home mart of Dutch enterprise than Surinam; and the eastern colony is indisputably the more attractive, the larger, the wealthier, and, more I believe owing to external and accidental circumstances than to its own intrinsic qualities, as contrasted with those of its rival, porportionally the more remunerative of the two. Hence, while the invigorating cordial, to continue our former metaphor, or rather the true and certain panacea for the patient's lingering illness is poured out freely in the direction of the Pacific, a feeble and interrupted dribble is all that finds its way to the Atlantic coast. Nor again can the annual subsidy with which for years past the maternal government of the States has striven to uphold and still upholds the drooping vigour of her western offspring be regarded as a remedy adapted for the case; it is at best a palliative, nor, I think,—and in this the wisest heads of the colony agree,- one conducive to genuine recovery and health. State support after this fashion tends rather in its results to cramp the energies of the recipient than to develop them; it has something of the prop in it, but more of the fetter. Compare, for example, the French colonies, where it is most lavishly bestowed, with the English, where the opposite and almost niggardly extreme is the rule; the conclusion is self-apparent, and the corollary too. Periodical subsidy in particular is an error, less injurious it may be than the opposite conduct of Denmark, exacting for herself a yearly tribute from her overtaxed and exhausted colonies, but an error nevertheless; it is the injudicious conduct of an over-indulgent parent, as the other is that of a stepmother at best. Private enterprise, private capital, these are what Surinam requires; and, on the part of the mother country, not a supplement to her coffers, but a guarantee. Lastly, emancipation and its immediate and inevitable consequences, the multiplication of small freeholds, both of them events of yesterday in Surinam, have not yet allowed time for the balance of hired and independent labour to redress itself; nor has the increase of creole well-being yet reacted, as react it ultimately must, in a corresponding increase of prosperity among the European townsmen and estate-owners themselves. The present moment is one of transition; and transition implies that something has been left behind, a temporary loss even where more has been attained, or is in process of attainment. W. GIFFORD PALGRAVE. From Blackwood's Magazine. THE DILEMMA. CHAPTER XL. BUT the intimacy was rudely interrupted. One day Kirke received a letter from army headquarters, through the general commanding the station, enclosing an anonymous vernacular petition which had been addressed to the commander-in-chief, in which various irregularities were alleged to have been committed by him in regard to the regimental accounts; and, although it was not intended to take any action on an anonymous petition, it was suggested to be desirable that he should furnish any explanations he thought proper upon the allegations made. Kirke kept the matter from the knowledge of the other officers, although it leaked out through the station staff-office that such a letter had been received; but his suspicions pointed to the ressaldar Futteh Khan as the writer of the petition, some of the more specific allegations in it referring to transactions principally relating to advances of paywith which this officer was concerned; while the man, he recollected, had been reprimanded, not to say abused, publicly before the whole regiment one day, just about the time this petition was dated. Sending for the man therefore to his house, he taxed him with the authorship. The ressaldar, although denying it, did so in such a way as to confirm Kirke's suspicions, and to draw down upon him a volley of abuse from his infuriated commanding officer, which the man, instead of receiving quietly as would have been usual, losing his temper in turn, replied to insolently; whereon Kirke put him in arrest, and applied to the major-general for a court-martial to try him for insubordination. The man now sent in another petition, this time in his own name, containing numerous specific accusations against his commandant of irregular transactions in regard to the regimental accounts, improper dealings with the native banker of the regiment, and above all, that he had drawn pay for troopers in excess of the number enlisted, for many months after the regiment was first raised. On this petition being received at headquarters, an order was issued from the adjutant-general's office to Sir Montague Tartar to convene a court of inquiry, composed of the senior officers at the station, who had Colonel Kirke and the regimental records under examination for many days, and called numerous native officers and troopers of the regiment as witnesses. Kirke at first made light of the matter; it was a mere conspiracy of a scoundrel, who of course, after the manner of his race, was ready to swear to anything - a scoundrel whom he should have got rid of long before, and would get rid of now. For although no witnesses were present in the room where the ressaldar had been received by his commandant, the orderlies in the verandah heard the voices in altercation, and on their evidence the courtmartial held upon the native officer found him guilty of insubordination, and he was dismissed the service those not being times, just after the mutiny had been suppressed, for passing over breaches of discipline in the native army. Meanwhile the protracted sitting of the court of inquiry created great excitement among the European community, extending far beyond the station of Mustaphabad. The proceedings of the court were kept secret officially, but tolerably authentic rumours as to their nature leaked out; and while the general sentiment was one of dismay and regret that so distinguished a soldier should be subject to the indignity of inquiry into his conduct, there were not wanting others to remind the public that Colonel Kirke had already once before been in trouble for irregularities of the same sort; and while some people argued that the fact of his having suffered already in this way would naturally make him particularly careful not to commit himself again by a similar error, other critics explained the coincidence of events by the assumed natural propensities of the man. As for Yorke, although he shrank from suspecting his commanding officer of anything like dishonesty, he could not divest himself of an uneasy feeling regarding the regimental accounts, calling to mind the evident disinclination of the former to let them go out of his own hands, and also certain points in them which had come under observation during his examination of the regimental books, and which, although he did not perfectly understand them at the time, seemed now, seen by the light thrown upon them by these accusations, to suggest at least a mystification of facts. But the allegations made were of a kind which it would be almost impossible to prove. The regimental accounts had no doubt been irregularly kept, and there was a want of agreement between the sums charged for troopers' pay at the time of first embodiment, and the corresponding vouchers in the way of musterrolls; but as Kirke fairly urged, how was it to be expected that they should have been properly kept, by a man who was spending day and night in the saddle, and had so many other things to attend toamong others, to help. in saving the empire - besides keeping muster-rolls and cash-accounts? and was it fair to turn round on an officer whose services had been such as his, and call him to account for these matters, and this at the instance of a worthless native who had been dismissed the service? The court evidently thought so too; and although not altogether satisfied with his mode of explaining the transactions under inquiry, which had not tended to make a complicated business clearer, they were disposed on the whole to regard Kirke as an ill-used man, who had been at worst careless under great excuse; and they would have reported to this effect, when another communication was received from army headquarters—a letter from the ex-ressaldar, accusing his late commanding officer of having appropriated jewels captured dur ing the war, instead of making them over to the prize-agents, which accusation also the court was directed to inquire into. The members of the court did not attach much importance to this complaint, it being generally supposed that such appropriations and stray plunder had been not infrequent during the war, few persons believing at the time that there would be any formal distribution of prize-money; and the prosecutor's statements on this head would have met with but little serious attention, but for a turn unexpectedly given to the inquiry. Yorke was under examination one day on a matter connected with the regimental accounts, when the president of the court asked him to state what he knew about certain jewels, supposed to have been seized by Colonel Kirke, as it was understood that he also was present at the capture. Yorke, who did not know precisely with what object the question was put - for the fact of the charge having been made was still kept secret - did not immediately understand what was referred to; but on the matter coming to his recollection, he stated what he knew about it: how the colonel had let the ressaldar take the jewelled dagger found on the prisoner in the palkee, and the trooper the bag of money; while he himself took possession of the little case of jewels. Then, in reply to a question put by a member of the court, Yorke added that, so far as he could judge, the jewels were of some value; but, he continued, "all this, I submit, has nothing to do with the matter; because, |