force of life's law as we Occidentals rarely learn it. Under the
dark fixed frown eye glitters like a serpent's.

[Illustration: VICTORIA REGIA IN THE CANAL AT GEORGETOWN]

Nearly all wear the same Indian dress; the thickly folded
turban, usually white, white drawers reaching but half-way down
the thigh, leaving the knees and the legs bare, and white jacket.
A few don long blue robes, and wear a colored head-dress: these
are babagees-priests. Most of the men look tall; they are slender
and small-boned, but the limbs are well turned. They are grave--
talk in low tones, and seldom smile. Those you see heavy black
beards are probably Mussulmans: I am told they have their mosques
here, and that the muezzein's call to prayer is chanted three
times daily on many plantations. Others shave, but the
Mohammedans allow all the beard to grow.... Very comely some of
the women are in their close-clinging soft brief robes and
tantalizing veils--a costume leaving shoulders, arms, and ankles
bare. The dark arm is always tapered and rounded; the silver-
circled ankle always elegantly knit to the light straight foot.
Many slim girls, whether standing or walking or in repose, offer
remarkable studies of grace; their attitude when erect always
suggests lightness and suppleness, like the poise of a dancer.


... A coolie mother passes, carrying at her hip a very pretty
naked baby. It has exquisite delicacy of limb: its tiny ankles
are circled by thin bright silver rings; it looks like a little
bronze statuette, a statuette of Kama, the Indian Eros. The
mother's arms are covered from elbow to wrist with silver