West Indiaman

“ Ever since he had come West he had held the firm conviction that an Indian can never be anything but an Indian, and that to attempt to make anything else out of him is not only a sheer waste of time, effort, and money, but is also an injury to the Indian himself, because it gives him desires and ambitions that can do nothing but make discord with his Indian nature. ”

“ All these Indian faces have the same set, stem expression, the same knitting of the brows; and the keen gaze is not altogether pleasant. It borders upon hostility; it is the look of measurement—measurement physical and moral. In the mighty swarming of India these have learned the full meaning and force of life's law as we Occidentals rarely learn it. ”

“ Herein is the true significance of West India Emancipation. It stands out before all the world as a mighty, moral, and spiritual triumph. It is a product of the soul, not of the body. It is a contribution to common honesty without which nations as well as individuals sink to ruin. It is one of those words of life that proceedeth out of the mouth of God, by which nations are established, and kept alive and in moral health. ”

“ Like the glorious sun of the heavens, its light shines for all. But besides this general consideration, this boundless power and glory of liberty, West India emancipation has claims upon us as an event in this nineteenth century in which we live; for, rich as this century is in moral and material achievements, in progress and civilization, it can claim nothing for itself greater and grander than this act of the West India emancipation. ”

“ More than any other person, and chiefly because she is of the West, and speaks in the accents of the West, she has antagonized progress in this land, not only religiously but also socially, and has done the greatest disservice to the people of India. In her eyes, Hindu philosophy and ritual, Hindu institutions and domestic life, have practically nothing to learn from the West, and need only to be known in order to be appreciated and loved! ”

“ Never have rulers been less self-seeking than we have been in our Asiatic empire. No 'lex de repetundis' has been needed to punish avaricious proconsuls who had fattened on the provinces. In such positions the English show at their best, and do their best. India has been the training school of our greatest soldiers and greatest administrators. Strike off the Anglo-Indian names from the roll of famous Englishmen, and we shall lose the most illustrious of them all. ”

“ Viewing the people, as we must, largely from an impersonal standpoint, it impressed us that the West Indian cares very little for the welcome or for the hand of man from the great continent; but that he is up early in the morning to devise new ways of reaching the pockets of the invaders, come they ever so peaceably. ”

“ Men do not live by bread alone, so with nations. They are not saved by art, but by honesty. Not by the gilded splendors of wealth, but by the hidden treasure of manly virtue. Not by the multitudinous gratification of the flesh, but by the celestial guidance of the spirit.
It is in this view that West India Emancipation becomes the most interesting and sublime event of the nineteenth century. It was the triumph of a great moral principle, a decisive victory, after a severe and protracted struggle, of freedom over slavery ”

“ That's true, but I understand the Indians. Those who are my friends are my friends, and those who are my enemies are my enemies. I take it that in the West Indies you never know what change is coming. ”

“ It should be remembered that Westerners have lived in India so long as to have become perfectly well known to all the people. Moreover, the Western garb and habits of life represent to the Hindu honour, influence, power, and culture. In his heart of hearts the Hindu highly respects, and is always ready to listen to, that man of the West who is true to himself and stands before him for what he is and for what he teaches. The ordinary Hindu is not stupid enough to be deceived as to a man's nationality or true position in life because of his change of clothing or food. ”

“ The Indian gives to the white man all he needs, and aids him in obtaining from the wide stretch of land over which he roams all the wealth that it can afford. Practically one part of the Dominion is handed over to the Red Man and to the half-breeds, for there is an Indian frontier which as yet has not been much encroached upon by any large migration of whites. ”

“ I wish you to look at West India Emancipation as one complete transaction of vast and sublime significance, surpassing, all power of exaggeration. We hear and read much of the achievements of this nineteenth century, and much can be said, and truthfully said of them. The world has literally shot forward with the speed of steam and lightning. It has probably made more progress during the last fifty years, than in any five hundred years to which we can refer in the history of the race. Knowledge has been greatly increased, and its blessing widely diffused. ”

“ Necessity may compel the adult Indian to take up the spade and submit to manual labour, but a child brought up in the love of cultivating a garden will be naturally led to the culture of the field as a means of subsistence: and educated in the principles of Christianity, he will become stationary to partake of the advantages and privileges of civilization. It is through these means of instruction that a change will be gradually effected in the character of the North American Indian, who in his present savage state thinks it beneath the dignity of his independence to till the ground. ”

“ It is well to remember here that that modern product—the Hindu of Western culture who is so much in evidence today in India and who sometimes comes West in flowing orange robes and turban to urge his mongrel philosophy upon our fellow-countrymen—is not the type of Hindu appreciated by, or representing, the people of that land. ”

“ What the Indian lacks is not intelligence but character, that is to say will-power. The Indian is brave, he endures pain and privation with the greatest stoicism, he can be doggedly obstinate, but only in exceptional cases can he rise above his fellows to anything approaching individuality and strength of mind. ”

“ The West Indian peasant can, if he will, carry ‘la petite Culture’ to a perfection and a wealth which it has not yet attained even in China, Japan, and Hindostan, and make every rood of ground not merely maintain its man, but its civilised man. This, however, will require a skill and a thoughtfulness which the Negro does not as yet possess. ”

“ Three or four things must be supplied if the West Indian is to rise above his present level. He needs living wages, he needs intelligent and responsible leadership; he needs a better education, and he needs a broader social basis and a wider horizon for his circle of life. ”

“ Thirty thousand rough whites could hardly invade an Indian province without some little trouble from the natives, and one or two fights took place; but as a rule the two races got on very well together. The newcomers washing sand along the river beds did not destroy the game on which the old inhabitants depended for their living; true British justice was measured out to red man and to white with equal hand; and the Indians took readily to such work as white employers wanted done. ”

“ The Indian lives in a world of imagined dangers, over and above the real ones that confront him at every turn. There is possible menace in any place, dormant hostility in all surrounding nature, active menace in the unfamiliar and unknown. ”

“ As to the West Indies there are but two genuine alternatives: one to leave them to themselves to shape their own destinies, as we leave Australia; the other to govern them as if they were a part of Great Britain with the same scrupulous care of the people and their interests with which we govern Bengal, Madras, and Bombay. England is responsible for the social condition of those islands. She filled them with negroes when it was her interest to maintain slavery, she emancipated those negroes when popular opinion at home demanded that slavery should end. ”

“ It must, not be expected, however, that the Indians will easily forsake a mode of life that is so congenial to man, in his natural love of ease and indolence and licentious freedom. Necessity, in a measure, must compel them to do this; but the children may be educated, and trained to industry upon the soil, in the hope that they may be recovered from their savage habits and customs, to see and enjoy the blessings of civilization and Christianity. ”

“ We forget that West Indian wealth was invested in Britain’s greatness years before we had an empire. We forget that Britain’s navy was founded by men who were trained to war and seamanship among those islands of the West. More than once have these islands seen the pride and glory of England hanging in the balance, and once, at least, the Indies knew before the homeland that a blow, which had threatened the very foundations of British greatness, had been hurled in vain. ”

“ Perhaps the Indian trait that soonest strikes, and most indelibly impresses the observer, is his charming altruism in the community of the family or tribal group, his wild misanthropy towards other tribes. His ambition is to live undisturbed with his family in the deep recesses of the forest. He asks only to be let alone. ”

“ Sheds were full of empty sugar-casks, ready for the approaching crop-time. A truck was waiting for us on a tramway; and we scrambled on shore on a bed of rich black mud, to be received, of course, in true West Indian fashion, with all sorts of courtesies and kindnesses.
And here let me say, that those travellers who complain of discourtesy in the West Indies can have only themselves to thank for it. The West Indian has self-respect, and will not endure people who give themselves airs. ”

“ Wherever the Vigilant folded her white wings and came to rest, we were besieged by a small army of black, brown, yellow, and every intermediate shade, all begging to be allowed to accompany us. For the West Indian is a restless soul, never content unless on the move and caring not a jot where day or [14] night may find him, albeit he is intensely patriotic, and thinks his island preferable to all others and his people the salt of the earth. ”

“ It’s just another of the West Indian surprises. You come to a country which has been under the beneficent English rule for over one hundred years, and you find the natives—the men who drive for you, who row you ashore, who carry your plunder, the women in the market—all speaking an almost unintelligible jargon of French, Spanish, Portuguese, English, with a little Hindustani and Chinese thrown in. ”

“ The luminosities of tropic foliage could only be imitated in fire. He who desires to paint a West Indian forest,—a West Indian landscape,—must take his view from some great height, through which the colors come to his eye softened and subdued by distance,—toned with blues or purples by the astonishing atmosphere.
... It is sunset as I write these lines, and there are witchcrafts of color. Looking down the narrow, steep street opening to the bay, I see the motionless silhouette of the steamer on a perfectly green sea,—under a lilac sky,—against a prodigious orange light. ”

“ Seeing them under these or similar circumstances only, it is not surprising that by many the Indian is looked upon as a simple-minded 'son of Nature,' desiring nothing beyond the privilege of roaming and hunting over the vast unsettled wilds of the West, inheriting and asserting but few native rights, and never trespassing upon the rights of others. ”

“ If she decides that her hands are too full, that she is over-empired and cannot attend to them—caditquæstio—there is no more to be said. But if this is her resolution the hands of the West Indians ought to be untied. ”

“ A few years’ exile would make them see in a new light what they now regard with the indifference produced by familiarity. Those who look on the Anglo-Indian as a being who has but few thoughts apart from the country in which he is doomed to spend the greater part of his life, little imagine with what ardent yearning he looks towards home, and how precious is everything that reminds him of its pleasures. ”

“ Even the natives on this point agree cordially with the Europeans.
A notice of the character of the English in India would be incomplete without some reference to their relations with the natives, with regard to which there has been an immense amount of misrepresentation. As a rule, Anglo-Indians (we speak more particularly of those in the service of Government) are kind to their servants and to those natives with whom they are thrown into contact. Intimacy there cannot be: the difference of race, colour, religion, character, and last, not least, the omnipresent system of caste forbid that. ”

“ If, in these pages, he can help others of the West to come face to face with the immense and intricate problems which confront all who desire to know, to help, and to bless India, and shall enable them to understand better the conditions and characteristics of life in the Land of the Vedas, he will feel amply repaid for his labours. ”

“ If I were a West Indian I should feel that under the stars and stripes I should be safer than I was at present from political experimenting. I should have a market [Pg 317] in which to sell my produce where I should be treated as a friend; I should have a power behind me and protecting me, and I should have a future to which I could look forward with confidence. America would restore me to home and life; Great Britain allows me to sink, contenting herself with advising me to be patient. ”