In speech, character, and deportment, a coloured
native of Trinidad differs as much from one of Barbados as a North
American black does from either, in all the above respects.
BOOK I: GRENADA
[48] In Grenada, the next island he arrived at, our traveller's
procedure with regard to the inhabitants was very similar. There he
landed in the afternoon, drove three or four miles inland to dine at
the house of a "gentleman who was a passing resident," returned in
the dark to his ship, and started for Trinidad. In the course of
this journey back, however, as he sped along in the carriage, Mr.
Froude found opportunity to look into the people's houses along the
way, where, he tells us, he "could see and was astonished to observe
signs of comfort, and even signs of taste--armchairs, sofas, side-
boards with cut-glass upon them, engravings and coloured prints upon
the walls." As a result of this nocturnal examination, a vol
d'oiseau, he has written paragraph upon paragraph about the people's
character [49] and prospects in the island of Grenada. To read the
patronizing terms in which our historian-traveller has seen fit to
comment on Grenada and its people, one would believe that his account
is of some half-civilized, out-of-the-way region under British sway,
and inhabited chiefly by a horde of semi-barbarian ignoramuses of
African descent.
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