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pact majority, and offered a gallant but fruitless resistance to nearly every proposal. These brought forward a complete scheme for the lowering of the property qualifications, for the scrutin de liste, and other alterations, which they embodied in a protest addressed to the secretary of state. Another member, otherwise at one with the dominant faction, also drew up a protest against the educational test, setting forth its folly and futility in remarkably forcible language. Finally, the aged Nestor wrote a long letter to the Colonial Office, recounting with biting sarcasm the secret history of the sessions of the Commission, with all the absurdities, negligences, and ignorances thereof. It was he who proved the worthlessness of the two returns on which the Commission relied for an estimate of the number of voters; no very difficult task, inasmuch as the returns were based on no particular calculations, and differed from each other to a considerable degree for no particular reason. The first set down the probable number of voters at nine thousand; the second hastily increased it to twelve thousand. Appended to this letter was a speech of the protector of immigrants, far the best authority in the island as to the condition of the Indians, stating that the franchise proposed would utterly exclude the poorer Creoles and Indians, many of whom were capable of giving an intelligent vote. This speech, it is needless to say, was unheeded by the majority of the Commission.

At this point (May, 1885) we close the history of the reform movement in Mauritius, having no occasion to follow it any farther. It is hard to say to which of the three parties chiefly concerned it is least creditable — to the Liberal colonial minister, or to the Liberal governor, or to the Liberal Mauritians. Lord Derby first rightly declines to grant elective institutions; then he agrees to concede them though adhering to his opinion that Mauritius is better without them. Too late he finds out that he has been hoodwinked, and he is then very indignant. It is all of a piece with the policy of the then government weak, vacillating, always too late. Sir John Pope Hennessy is fully assured in Mauritius in 1884 that chattering power is a sure index of political capacity, and is prepared to support a grant of elective institutions in virtue thereof; though he was fully convinced of the contrary in Barbados in 1876, where he turned three of the Windward Islands into crown colonies, and endeavored to do the same with a fourth.

Then, again, the Liberal Mauritians, were loud in their protestations of fairness and friendliness to the Indians at first, but steadily hostile to the same Indians when the time came to make their professions good. In Jamaica, also, where the Africans have an enormous numerical predominance, we found loud outcry for representative institutions but the same attempt by the same means to exclude the blacks. In both cases there is something suspiciously like a tampering with figures. The Jamaica Commission, after impos ing educational restrictions, estimated the probable number of electors at twelve thousand. Sir Henry Norman, after removing these restrictions, set it down at no more than nine thousand. The Mauritian Commission reckoned the voters first at nine thousand, and then increased the estimate to twelve thousand, while sober calculation could not set them down at more than three thousand.

Sir John Pope Hennessy, in forwarding this letter, treated it with indifference, as unworthy of serious notice; but Lord Derby took a contrary view. His eyes were by this time pretty well opened to the true intent of the so-called Liberal movement, and to the manner in which the governor had treated it. Lord Derby rejected the proposal to grant the vote to journalists, etc., cut down the property qualifications by about one-third; and, while approving of an educational test in the abstract, objected to any scheme which should require Indians to read and write in any language but their own, or postpone the enforcement of the test to some future period. He accepted the proof of the worthlessness of the estimates showing the number of voters, and, as a final warning to headlong spirits, ordered the gov-stitutions. The details of such a reform ernor to inform the Nestor of the Council that the latter's observations had been considered by the Colonial Office with the attention to which his experience and zeal for the public interests of Mauritius entitled them.

Now, what is the true meaning of these two reform movements? It is simply that the dominant white oligarchy is trembling for its supremacy, and, in order to maintain it, has appealed to the weak side of every English statesman (though some English statesmen have nothing but weak sides) by a clamor for representative in

must necessarily be left to these same whites as the only persons competent to deal with them; and forthwith the opportunity is seized to assume, or reassume, the sway which the white man claims as his right over the black.

Nor are such fears unfounded. The Trinidad (a riot only put down by firing raison d'être of crown-colony government on the mob, ten of whom were killed and is the impartial nurture and protection of a hundred wounded) shows that Indian blacks and whites alike; and hence the immigrants of all kinds will unite for misblack population advances far more rap-chief. In Jamaica, where the blacks are idly both in numbers and influence under of African and not of Indian blood, there it than under a white oligarchy-in num- is the recollection of a former outbreak to bers, because immigrants feel secure un- keep alive resentment against the now der the shadow of the crown; in influence, dominant whites. What they may lack in because more attention is paid to their religious fanaticism may easily be supmoral and physical welfare. Further, plied by demogogic eloquence, which has while the blacks have increased in num- a singular charm for the African. But bers, the whites have decreased. The here, again, the change may be made white French population has, according to without bloodshed. One thing is certain. figures in the blue-books, diminished from If the blacks do obtain the upper hand, eight thousand in 1831 to a little over two the whites will diminish rapidly, until thousand in 1883, while the blacks have their influence and ultimately their presincreased as we have seen. Nor is this ence is a thing of the past. This may otherwise than natural. Where the black be judged from the example of Martiand the white man live side by side within nique, Guadeloupe, and Réunion, to which a small area, the climate that favors the islands the fanatical folly of Gambetta one must necessarily be injurious to the conceded, by a stroke of the pen, the privother. It is well known that the third ilege of universal suffrage. What may generation of Englishmen born on the come, then, no one can tell. We have the plains of India is worth nothing; while dismal story of Haiti to give us some that degraded race, "the mean whites," in clue; but perhaps it would be unjust, as Barbados, and doubtless in other tropical well as rash, to draw inferences too colonies also, clearly shows that the deca- hastily. dence of the white men in a hot climate is not unexampled in other places besides India. Add to this the fact that color, in spite of all the speeches ever made in Exeter Hall, remains the strongest barrier between man and man; and it is not difficult to account for the reform movements in Mauritius and in Jamaica.

That the Mauritians are alive to the danger is shown by the whole story of the agitation, without need to examine the sociological researches of an actual member of the white community. How long the whites may retain their supremacy now that they have, in spite of themselves, relaxed their hold on the colored population, it is not easy to say. Mr. Broome reported that, with the best intentions, he had been unable to find a single Indian fit to sit even at the Council of Education; but it is possible that the Indian voters may succeed even where Mr. Broome failed. If Indian natives find it worth while to come to England to seek a place in the Imperial Parliament, it is hardly likely that they will let pass such a chance as Mauritius offers to their ambition. There, the qualifications are the same for electors and candidates. If the Indians, therefore, bide their time, they can hardly fail, unless checked by British bayonets, to rise ultimately to supreme power in the island. Diversities of race and religion may cause delay; but recent experience in

The one conclusion to which these considerations lead us is that in countries of small area, where men of white and colored races live together, there is no safe medium between crown colony (i.e., absolute government) and the fullest development of the representative principle. The first means the supremacy of the whites, order, peace, and prosperity at the expense of a small garrison. The second means the supremacy of the colored, and what further we cannot pretend to say. Anything between the two must lead to a constant struggle of races, with all the rascality, folly, and violence which_colorhatred, ignorance, jealousy and faction can generate. - an eternal effort on the part of the whites to keep political power to themselves, and ceaseless striving on the part of the colored to wrest it from them. If we are content to let these tropical islands pass to the colored races well and good; let us give them not sham but real representative institutions. If we wish to retain them, and uphold the wel fare of both blacks and whites, we must govern them autocratically. That pseudorepresentative government has failed in such communities may be seen from the history of the British West Indies in general and of Jamaica in particular; that true representative government has failed, from that of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Réunion; that enlightened despotism has

gay with radiant silks, and gauzes which | Among water-coolers and pitchers of rude seem woven of moonshine and mist. The earthenware, but of artistic shape, exquidark gallery behind him glows with the site brazen trays stand filled with tiny crimson and purple of the long sashes and coffee-cups, painted or set with turquoise, streamers which wave from the roof of the and inserted in filigree of gold or silver. silk-bazaar. He smokes a peaceful nar- Delicious scents of attar of rose from ghileh, and sips coffee from a jewelled pharmacy and drug-store mingle with uncup, exhibiting his treasures with a wave poetic odors from strings of gigantic of the arm, but not condescending to onions and drying herbs. Cobwebby speak. A youthful Asiatic, in gold-em- muslins, silver embroidery inlaid with broidered jacket and gorgeous shawl, pre- turquoise, and veils sparkling with tinsel, sides over stores of Turkish delight, jostle Manchester prints and calicoes; rose-leaf jam, and other marvellous con- and among Mahometan books, in quaint fections of the East. For the encourage- Turkish characters, stand hideous oleoment of the purchaser he inserts a lovely graphs of Western manufacture and crudinlaid dagger into one of his jam-pots, and est coloring. The spoils of East and from thence into his own mouth, to con- West are mingled, greatly to the disadvince us of the harmless nature of the vantage of the latter. unknown sweetmeats. This is so far satisfactory, but his disappointment is bitter indeed when we decline a savory morsel from the point of the same knife; and as he shows signs of tearing his gracefully draped shawl into shreds (an Oriental expression of regret), we beat a hasty retreat. Red and blue woollen horse-collars inlaid with white shells, and the beaded trappings of donkeys have a street of their own, in which gorgeously decorated scarlet saddles swing from the eaves. Then comes (oh, frightful anomaly !) a corridor of cheap china, petroleumlamps, lacquer, and tin, all freshly imported from Birmingham, that commercial Inferno of prosaic ugliness which casts its black and dismal shadow far and wide over the fairest lands of East and West. Judging from the excited crowd gathered round the hideous productions of the grimy manufacturing centre, the leaven of evil already begins to work in the Asiatic mind, and the coarse, machine-made wares win universal admiration.

The scent of late roses and ripe fruit lures us into a side street of such poetical beauty that we might suppose the flowery garlands and vine-wreathed grape-baskets arranged by trained artists rather than by mere Asiatic peasants. Stumbling over mounds of rosy pomegranates and green melons, we dive through an avenue of orange and lemon boughs to refresh ourselves in the street of the sherbet-sellers, who rattle their copper cups and shout at us in stentorian tones which our guide interprets as " Drink, and cheer thy heart." We gladly accede to the welcome exhortation, for sherbet of lemon and rose-water cooled by Olympian snows is not to be despised under an Asiatic sun. Peasants and farmers throng the grain-bazaar, a somewhat primitive corn exchange, filled with sacks overflowing with wheat, rice, and millet. Women, with creels on their backs, barter their loads of vegetables at a stall where provisions, cooked and uncooked, stand in miscellaneous confusion. Fish is frizzling, coffee being ground, and huge dishes of pilau are

Our vexation is soothed by the pipebazaar, where every variety of hubble-handed about into which fingers and bubble, meerschaum, and narghileh is to be found, including the pinewood pipes covered with fir-cones, which are one of the Broussa spécialités. The copper smiths' bazaar displays wonderful dishes and culinary utensils to those travellers who can endure the deafening clamor and din. The shoe-bazaar shows a long vista of dangling scarlet and yellow slippers, as well as wooden clogs lined with pink leather, and decorated with straps of vel vet and tinsel. The mysteries of Oriental headgear may be studied in the turban bazaar, full of the wonderful paraphernalia of cap, fez, veil, and turban, which protect Eastern heads from the ardent sun.

wooden spoons are indiscriminately dipped on every side. Bakers are carrying about trays of flat bread, smoking hot from the oven, and the cries of the lemonade-sellers resound in every street, where syrups, liquorice-water, and tamarind-juice are pressed at every moment on the passengers. Even the butchers' shops are amusing from the extraordinary manner in which the meat is cut up for sale; the heads of the animals in close proximity to their curiously jointed anatomy, and often decorated with green boughs or pink paper streamers. Everybody must buy the local manufactures in the Broussa bazaar, and, laden with pipes, veils, mule-trappings,

blue beads plaited with string, are ridden | Mahometan architecture, forcibly conveys astride by white-veiled women wearing the prevailing Moslem idea of the Divine wide blue trousers. The panniers, now unity. An air of desolation and desertion emptied of their loads of fruit and vegeta- surrounds mosque and tomb. Mahomebles, are full of brown children in gay tanism in Broussa has evidently cooled attire; while patriarchal figures in brilliant down from the white heat to which it coloring lead the way with staff in hand. burns in the modern Turkish capital, Here a string of camels sails past with where devotion is deep in proportion to ill-tempered groans and grunts, making its narrowness. Perhaps the stimulus of occasional vicious plunges at a tiny boy opposing creeds, which acts as the sharp in an orange tunic, who tries to keep the spur to fanaticism, is unfelt in a city long line in place. Children in pink, yel- which has ceased to be a centre of either low, and purple play in the streets; men ecclesiastical or secular interests. Very with jackets and turbans stiff with gold few worshippers are to be seen; here and and silver embroidery, or with flowing there a dervish and his disciples sit on robes of many colors, smoke or grind cof- their prayer-carpets rocking to and fro, fee at every corner; dignified Jews, in and chanting in the comical nasal twang fur-lined gaberdines, stroll up and down; which appears to be the approved tone of women in tinsel-covered veils, with shining Oriental worship. They are not too much coins wound in hair and bodice, throw absorbed in prayer for a pause and a good back the shutters of the low, white houses gossip at the entrance of strangers; and to admit the evening breeze. The orange when the cradle-like shoes provided for sunset heightens the brilliancy and deep-infidel feet slip off unobserved by the ens the tints of the wonderful coup-d'œil wearer, who returns for them in terrified presented by each arcaded street. It haste on discovering their loss, the chant resembles some magic vision of Arabian Nights rather than a reality of the present century; and the dreamlike impression is intensified as the broad sun sinks below the horizon, and the sudden darkness of the South falls upon the scene. The little inn, gay with Oriental rugs and divans, and sweet with pungent grass matting, makes a pretty picture, with its colored lamps gleaming through the night, their rosy light falling upon hangings and prayer-carpets of lovely, blended hues. The courtyard is full of fountains, which make pleasant lounging-places in the starlit evening; for doors and gates are bolted and barred at sunset, and Broussa, in true Oriental fashion, is wrapped in absolute darkness - the stillness of the streets only broken by the barking of dogs and the occasional footfall of some mysterious figure carrying a tiny lantern, with which he carefully picks his way across the nu merous snares and pitfalls of Asiatic pavements.

The celebrated mosques containing the tombs of the early sultans are our first destination in the morning. They are large and elaborately decorated, but lack the grand simplicity by which the ideal mosque is rendered impressive. The turquoise-tinted tiles of the Green Mosque, the shields and banners of Osman's tomb, and the gaudy interior of Ilu Djami produce a somewhat tawdry and theatrical effect. The details are too insistent, and not sufficiently merged in that unity of design which, in the best specimens of

of the neophytes relapses into an unmistakable giggle. Exquisite tiling of softest color adorns dome and tomb; each tomb surmounted by the turban and sword of the sultan who sleeps below. Green banners, bearing the sacred device of the silver crescent, droop in heavy folds from the roof, and shields with inscriptions from the Koran surround each building. The mosques are so identical in character that interest soon flags, monotony being the keynote of the faith of Islam. The cry of the turbaned muezzin from minaret to minaret, as we emerge into the sunny street, seems to echo every phase of the Moslem creed, as one turns impatiently from a deism so remote from human sympathies, and so destitute of connecting links between earth and heaven.

Fortunately for the unappreciative Frankish mind, the interests of Broussa are not restricted to its mosques. The beautiful bazaar is one of the most characteristic features of the city, and far surpasses that of Constantinople in local color and undiluted Orientalism. The dim arcades and shadowy domes of the huge building which contains street after street of varied merchandise, shelter us from the burning sun. We join a dazzling, many-colored crowd of veiled women, turbaned men, and fantastically clad children; while donkeys, mules, and camels mingle with the throng, and add their quota to the pandemonium of noise which echoes through the dusky corridors. Here a solemn Turk sits cross-legged on a stall

gay with radiant silks, and gauzes which | Among water-coolers and pitchers of rude seem woven of moonshine and mist. The earthenware, but of artistic shape, exquidark gallery behind him glows with the site brazen trays stand filled with tiny crimson and purple of the long sashes and coffee-cups, painted or set with turquoise, streamers which wave from the roof of the and inserted in filigree of gold or silver. silk-bazaar. He smokes a peaceful nar- Delicious scents of attar of rose from ghileh, and sips coffee from a jewelled pharmacy and drug-store mingle with uncup, exhibiting his treasures with a wave poetic odors from strings of gigantic of the arm, but not condescending to onions and drying herbs. Cobwebby speak. A youthful Asiatic, in gold-em- muslins, silver embroidery inlaid with broidered jacket and gorgeous shawl, pre- turquoise, and veils sparkling with tinsel, sides over stores of Turkish delight, jostle Manchester prints and calicoes ; rose-leaf jam, and other marvellous con- and among Mahometan books, in quaint fections of the East. For the encourage- Turkish characters, stand hideous oleoment of the purchaser he inserts a lovely graphs of Western manufacture and crudinlaid dagger into one of his jam-pots, and est coloring. The spoils of East and from thence into his own mouth, to con- West are mingled, greatly to the disadvince us of the harmless nature of the vantage of the latter. unknown sweetmeats. This is so far satisfactory, but his disappointment is bitter indeed when we decline a savory morsel from the point of the same knife; and as he shows signs of tearing his gracefully draped shawl into shreds (an Oriental expression of regret), we beat a hasty retreat. Red and blue woollen horse-collars inlaid with white shells, and the beaded trappings of donkeys have a street of their own, in which gorgeously decorated scarlet saddles swing from the eaves. Then comes (oh, frightful anomaly!) a corridor of cheap china, petroleumlamps, lacquer, and tin, all freshly imported from Birmingham, that commercial Inferno of prosaic ugliness which casts its black and dismal shadow far and wide over the fairest lands of East and West. Judging from the excited crowd gathered round the hideous productions of the grimy manufacturing centre, the leaven of evil already begins to work in the Asiatic mind, and the coarse, machine-made wares win universal admiration.

The scent of late roses and ripe fruit lures us into a side street of such poetical beauty that we might suppose the flowery garlands and vine-wreathed grape-baskets arranged by trained artists rather than by mere Asiatic peasants. Stumbling over mounds of rosy pomegranates and green melons, we dive through an avenue of orange and lemon boughs to refresh ourselves in the street of the sherbet-sellers, who rattle their copper cups and shout at us in stentorian tones which our guide interprets as "Drink, and cheer thy heart." We gladly accede to the welcome exhortation, for sherbet of lemon and rose-water cooled by Olympian snows is not to be despised under an Asiatic sun. Peasants and farmers throng the grain-bazaar, a somewhat primitive corn exchange, filled with sacks overflowing with wheat, rice, and millet. Women, with creels on their backs, barter their loads of vegetables at a stall where provisions, cooked and uncooked, stand in miscellaneous confusion. Fish is frizzling, coffee being ground, and huge dishes of pilau are

Our vexation is soothed by the pipebazaar, where every variety of hubble-handed about into which fingers and bubble, meerschaum, and narghileh is to be found, including the pinewood pipes covered with fir-cones, which are one of the Broussa spécialités. The copper smiths' bazaar displays wonderful dishes and culinary utensils to those travellers who can endure the deafening clamor and din. The shoe-bazaar shows a long vista of dangling scarlet and yellow slippers, as well as wooden clogs lined with pink leather, and decorated with straps of vel vet and tinsel. The mysteries of Oriental headgear may be studied in the turbanbazaar, full of the wonderful paraphernalia of cap, fez, veil, and turban, which protect Eastern heads from the ardent sun.

wooden spoons are indiscriminately dipped on every side. Bakers are carrying about trays of flat bread, smoking hot from the oven, and the cries of the lemonade-sellers resound in every street, where syrups, liquorice-water, and tamarind-juice are pressed at every moment on the passengers. Even the butchers' shops are amusing from the extraordinary manner in which the meat is cut up for sale; the heads of the animals in close proximity to their curiously jointed anatomy, and often decorated with green boughs or pink paper streamers. Everybody must buy the local manufactures in the Broussa bazaar, and, laden with pipes, veils, mule-trappings,

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