than any that I have yet heard or seen in practice. Then combine these, or similar measures, with a reasonable supply of the two needful things, without which neither Surinam nor any other transatlantic colony can prosper, or, indeed exist capital and immigration. Not the capital of official subsidy, but of private enterprise; nor the immigration of costly and burdensome East-Indian coolies, or the yet costlier and yet more troublesome Chinese, but of vigorous, healthy, willing east-Africans, the ex-slaves of the Zanzibar and Oman markets. Then put these three requisites together, and stand up and prophesy to Dutch Guiana what golden-aged future you will; nor fear being numbered, in the latter days, among the false prophets — your place will be with the true.
The sea-ebb has set the dammed-up waters of the Commeweyne at liberty to follow their natural bent, and we float swiftly down the stream, admiring, commenting, and enjoying, now the ever-varying, ever-recurring scenes of life and labour, of tropical nature and European energy, of forest, plantation, mansion, cottage, and field that every river-bend unfolds; now the "feast of reason and the flow of soul" — a very hackneyed phrase — as we go; and now more substantial feastings, and the flow of various compositions, very congenial to the Dutch soul and body too, nor less to the English. But the distance was considerable, and night looked down on us with its thousand starry eyes long before we reached Fort Amsterdam and the broad Surinam waters. An hour later we disembarked at the governnent stelling of the silent capital, well pleased with our river-excursion and with each other.
Not many days after I was riding out with the governor on the high-road — that is to say, on the horse-path, for the true high-road here, as elsewhere in Guiana, is by water — leading towards the wooded regions of Para, south-west of Paramaribo, to which, in composition with some other Indian word, it has given its name. Its inhabitants are reckoned, exclusive of bush-negroes, at nearly five thousand; they live in villages, and occupy themselves to some extent in sugar cultivation, but generally in small lots, where grow cocoa, coffee, and plantains; indigo and tobacco are also among the products of the land. The ground is well raised above the water-level — to the south, indeed, it becomes hilly; the forest scenery is said to surpass in beauty, as in extent, that of any other district in the colony. "You can ride for seven days in one direction without ever getting out of the shade," said the governor, as I noticed the noble outskirts of the woods before us; and he urged on me, almost as a duty, a visit to Para, where, amid the small creole proprietors and the forest-embowered villages, he assured me I should see Surinam negro life to better advantage, witness greater comfort and contentment, act spectator, or sharer, if the fancy took, of gayer festivities than even on the banks of the Cottica and at Munnikendam. But my hank of Surinam thread was too nearly spun out already, and the colours of other lands were now about to take its place in the fate-woven twine.
As for the sorry falls, which were the great inconsistencies of Dick, with which the heavy doubt of his ever winning Pleasance had a good deal to do, she not only looked on them piteously, they cut her to the heart. It was not that she agreed with the villagers in regarding "going on the spree" as a necessity, or at most as a slight offence, in an unmarried man of Dick's years. Pleasance was too godly, too innately and ineradicably refined for that, though she might inadvertently have stooped a little to the village standard of virtue; but she could not be the person to condemn Dick for sins into which she herself, however unwillingly, led him. She did not believe that these sins were a part of Dick — big, handsome, kindly Dick — who had been on the whole so gentle with Lizzie Blennerhasset. These were spots on the sun, flaws in the jewel, but they were no integral part of Dick.
Once, when Pleasance was in the village, she saw Dick stagger out of the Brown Cow. His gait, the firmness of which she had compared to that of a rock, was wavering and awry. His healthy face had an unhealthy flush, his observant eyes were clouded, a straw hat with a green riband which he was accustomed to wear, poised lightly, and which became him well, was falling back from his head. His speech was loud and bragging, like his
