child with the first box of paints. While I am looking at these
things, one coolie after another wakes up (these men sleep
lightly) and begins to observe me almost as curiously, and I fear
much less kindly, than I have been observing the gods. "Where is
your babagee?" I inquire. No one seems to comprehend my question;
the gravity of each dark face remains unrelaxed. Yet I would
have liked to make an offering unto Siva.

... Outside the Indian goldsmith's cabin, palm shadows are
crawling slowly to and fro in the white glare, like shapes of
tarantulas. Inside, the heat is augmented by the tiny charcoal
furnace which glows beside a ridiculous little anvil set into a
wooden block buried level with the soil. Through a rear door
come odors of unknown known flowers and the cool brilliant green
of banana leaves.... A minute of waiting in the hot silence;--
then, noiselessly as a phantom, the nude-limbed smith enters by a
rear door,--squats down, without a word, on his little mat beside
his little anvil,--and turns towards me, inquiringly, a face half
veiled by a black beard,--a turbaned Indian face, sharp, severe,
and slightly unpleasant in expression. "_Vlé béras!_" explains my
creole driver, pointing to his client. The smith opens his lips
to utter in the tone of a call the single syllable "_Ra_!" then
folds his arms.

[Illustration: COOLIES OF TRINIDAD.]

Almost immediately a young Hindoo woman enters, squats down on
the earthen floor at the end of the bench which forms the only
furniture of the shop, and turns upon me a pair of the finest
black eyes I have ever seen,--like the eyes of a fawn. She is