“So they came on board, and we set sail as I recounted to your honour.”
“But why didn’t your master, when he found out his mistake, return for the Latin professor?”
“Have I not told the Sahib that the key of the garden-gate had been thrown away, the walls cannot be scaled, and all the doors are bolted and barred every night as carefully as if a thousand prisoners were behind them?”
The population of Goa is composed of three heterogeneous elements, namely, pure Portuguese, black Christians, and the heathenry. A short description of each order will, perhaps, be acceptable to the reader.
The European portion of Goanese society may be subdivided into two distinct parts—the officials, who visit India on their tour of service, and the white families settled in the country. The former must leave Portugal for three years; and if in the army get a step by so doing. At the same time as, unlike ourselves, they derive no increase of pay from the expatriation, their return home is looked forward to with great impatience. Their existence in the East must be one of endurance. They complain bitterly of their want of friends, the disagreeable state of society, and the dull stagnant life they are compelled to lead. They despise their dark brethren, and consider them uncouth in manner, destitute of usage in society, and deficient in honour, courage,[29] and manliness. The despised retort by asserting that the white Portuguese are licentious, ill-informed, haughty, and reserved. No better proof of how utterly the attempt to promote cordiality between the European and the Asiatic by a system of intermarriage and equality of rights has failed in practice can be adduced, than the utter contempt in which the former holds the latter at Goa. No Anglo-Indian Nabob sixty years ago ever thought less of a “nigger” than a Portuguese officer now does. But as there is perfect equality, political[30] as well as social, between the two colours, the “whites,” though reduced to the level of the herd, hold aloof from it; and the “blacks” feel able to associate with those who despise them but do so rarely and unwillingly. Few open signs of dislike appear to the unpractised observer in the hollow politeness always paraded whenever the two parties meet; but when a Portuguese gentleman becomes sufficiently intimate with a stranger to be communicative, his first political diatribe is directed against his dark fellow-subjects. We were assured by a high authority that the native members of a court-martial, if preponderating, would certainly find a European guilty, whether rightly or wrongly, n’importe. The same gentleman, when asked which method of dealing with the natives he preferred, Albuquerque’s or that of Leadenhall Street, unhesitatingly replied, “the latter, as it is better to keep one’s enemies out of doors.” How like the remark made to Sir A. Burnes by Runjeet Singh, the crafty old politician of Northern India.
The reader may remember that it was Albuquerque[31] who advocated marriages between the European settlers and the natives of India. However reasonable it might have been to expect the amalgamation of the races in the persons of their descendants, experience and stern facts condemn the measure as a most delusive and treacherous political day dream. It has lost the Portuguese almost everything in Africa as well as Asia. May Heaven preserve our rulers from following their example! In our humble opinion, to tolerate it is far too liberal a measure to be a safe one.
The white families settled in the country were formerly called Castissos to distinguish them from Reinols. In appearance there is little difference between them; the former are somewhat less robust than the latter, but both are equally pallid and sickly-looking—they dress alike, and allow the beard and mustachios[32] to grow. This colonist class is neither a numerous nor an influential one. As soon as intermarriage with the older settlers takes place the descendants become Mestici—in plain English, mongrels. The flattering term is occasionally applied to a white family which has been settled in the country for more than one generation, “for although,” say the Goanese, “there is no mixture of blood, still there has been one of air or climate, which comes to the same thing.” Owing to want of means, the expense of passage, and the unsettled state of the home country, children are very seldom sent to Portugal for education. They presently degenerate, from the slow but sure effects of a debilitating climate, and its concomitant evils, inertness, and want of excitement. Habituated from infancy to utter idleness, and reared up to consider the far niente their summum bonum, they have neither the will nor the power of active exertion in after years.
There is little wealth among the classes above described. Rich families are rare, landed property is by no means valuable; salaries small;[33] and in so cheap a country as Goa anything beyond 200l. or 300l. a-year would be useless. Entertainments are not common; a ball every six months at Government House, a few dinner parties, and an occasional soirée or nautch, make up the list of gaieties. In the different little villages where the government employés reside, once a week there is quadrilling and waltzing, à l’antique, some flirting, and a great deal of smoking in the verandah with the ladies, who are, generally speaking, European. Gambling is uncommon; high play unknown. The theatre is closed as if never to open again. No serenades float upon the evening gale, the guitarra hangs dusty and worm-eaten against the wall, and the cicisbeo is known only by name. Intrigue does not show itself so flauntingly as in Italy, and other parts of Southern Europe. Scandal, however, is as plentiful as it always is in a limited circle of idle society. The stranger who visits Goa, persuaded that he is to meet with the freedom of manners and love of pleasure which distinguish the people of the Continent, will find himself grievously mistaken. The priesthood is numerous, and still influential, if not powerful. The fair sex has not much liberty here, and their natural protectors are jealous as jailers.