So much this little natural park of Aripo taught, or seemed to teach me.  But I did not learn the whole of the lesson that afternoon, or indeed till long after.  There was no time then to work out such theories.  The sun was getting low, and more intolerable as he sank; and to escape a sunstroke on the spot, or at least a dark ride home, we hurried off into the forest shade, after one last look at the never-to-be-forgotten Morichal, and trotted home to luxury and sleep.

CHAPTER XIII:  THE COCAL

Next day, like the ‘Young Muleteers of Grenada,’ a good song which often haunted me in those days,

’With morning’s earliest twinkle
Again we are up and gone,’

with two horses, two mules, and a Negro and a Coolie carrying our scanty luggage in Arima baskets:  but not without an expression of pity from the Negro who cleaned my boots.  ‘Where were we going?’ To the east coast.  Cuffy turned up what little nose he had.  He plainly considered the east coast, and indeed Trinidad itself, as not worth looking at.  ’Ah! you should go Barbadoes, sa.  Dat de country to see.  I Barbadian, sa.’  No doubt.  It is very quaint, this self-satisfaction of the Barbadian Negro.  Whether or not he belonged originally to some higher race—­for there are as great differences of race among Negroes as among any white men—­he looks down on the Negroes, and indeed on the white men, of other islands, as beings of an inferior grade; and takes care to inform you in the first five minutes that he is ’neider C’rab nor Creole, but true Barbadian barn.’  This self-conceit of his, meanwhile, is apt to make him unruly, and the cause of unruliness in others when he emigrates.  The Barbadian Negroes are, I believe, the only ones who give, or ever have given, any trouble in Trinidad; and in Barbadoes itself, though the agricultural Negroes work hard and well, who that knows the West Indies knows not the insubordination of the Bridgetown boatmen, among whose hands a traveller and his luggage are, it is said, likely enough to be pulled in pieces?  However, they are rather more quiet just now; for not a thousand years ago a certain steamer’s captain, utterly unable to clear his quarter of the fleet of fighting, jabbering brown people, turned the steam pipe on them.  At which quite unexpected artillery they fled precipitately; and have had some rational respect for a steamer’s quarter ever since.  After all, I do not deny that this man’s being a Barbadian opened my heart to him at once, for old sakes’ sake.