Six months in the West-Indies, in 1825

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TRINIDAD. The amazing contrast between these Indians and the negros powerfully arrested my attention. Their complexions do not differ so much as their minds and dispositions. In the first, life stagnates; in the last, it is tremulous with irritability. The negros cannot be silent; they talk in spite of themselves. Every passion acts upon them with strange intensity; their anger is sudden and furious, their mirth clamorous and excessive, their curiosity audacious, and their love the sheer demand for gratification of an ardent animal desire. Yet by their nature they are good-humored in the highest degree, and I know nothing more delightful than to be met by a group of negro girls, and be saluted with their kind ' How d'ye, massa ? how d'ye, massa ? their sparkling eyes and bunches of white teeth. It is said that even the slaves despise the Indians, and I think it very probable; the latter are decidedly inferior as intelligent beings. Indeed their history and existence form a deep subject for speculation. The flexibility of temper of the rest of mankind has been for the most part denied to them; they wither under transportation, they die under labor; they will never willingly or generally amalgamate with the races of Europe or Africa: if left to themselves with ample means of subsistence, they decrease in numbers every year; if compelled to any kind of improvement, they reluctantly acquiesce, and relapse with certainty the moment


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