The houses are generally of three stories; but the two upper only are used by the family. Outer steps lead up from the little front garden, generally into a verandah, and in this verandah a great portion of their life is led. It is cooler than the inner rooms. Not that I mean to say that any rooms in Demerara are ever hot. We all know the fine burst with which Scott opens a certain canto in one of his poems:—
| Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, |
| Who never to himself hath said, |
| This is my own, my native land? |
|
* * * |
| If such there breathe, go, mark him well. |
At any rate, there breathes no such man in this pleasant colony. A people so happily satisfied with their own position I never saw elsewhere, except at Barbados. And how could they fail to be satisfied, looking at their advantages? A million hogsheads of sugar to be made when the Coolies come!
They do not, the most of them, appeal to the land as being that of their nativity, but they love it no less as that of their adoption. "Look at me," says one; "I have been thirty years without leaving it, and have never had a headache." I look and see a remarkably hale man, of forty I should say, but he says fifty. "That's nothing," says another, who certainly may be somewhat stricken in years: "I have been here five-and-fifty years, and was never ill but once, when I was foolish enough to go to England. Ugh! I shall never forget it. Why, sir, there was frost in October!" "Yes," I said, "and snow in May sometimes. It is not all sunshine with us, whatever it may be with you."
"Not that we have too much sunshine," interposed a lady. "You don't think we have, do you?"
"Not in the least. Who could ask more, madam, than to bask in such sunshine as yours from year's end to year's end?"
"And is commerce tolerably flourishing?" I asked of a gentleman in trade.
"Flourishing, sir! If you want to make money, here's your ground. Why, sir, here, in this wretched little street, there has been more money turned in the last ten years than—than—than—" And he rummaged among the half-crowns in his breeches-pocket for a simile, as though not a few of the profits spoken of had found their way thither.
"Do you ever find it dull here?" I asked of a lady—perhaps not with very good taste—for we Englishmen have sometimes an idea that there is perhaps a little sameness about life in a small colony.
"Dull! no. What should make us dull? We have a great deal more to amuse us than most of you have at home." This perhaps might be true of many of us. "We have dances, and dinner-parties, and private theatricals. And then Mrs. ——!" Now Mrs. —— was the Governor's wife, and all eulogiums on society in Georgetown always ended with a eulogium upon her.