The Martinique negress is, as a rule, a handsome
bronze-coloured creature, and she wears a full-skirted, flowing dress
of flowered chintz or cretonne, with a _fichu_ of some
contrasting colour over her breast. She hides her woolly locks under
an ample turban of two shades, one of which will exactly match her
_fichu_, whilst the other will either correspond to or contrast
with the colour of her chintz dress, thus producing what the French
term "une gamme de couleur," most pleasing to the eye, and with never
a false note in it. Beside these comely, amply breasted bronze
statues, the British West Indian negress, with her absurd travesty of
European fashions, and her grotesque hats, cuts, I am bound to say, a
very poor figure indeed.
The flourishing little island of Montserrat has one peculiarity. The
negroes all speak with the strongest of Irish brogues. Cromwell
deported to Montserrat many of the "Malignants" from the West of
Ireland, who acquired negro slaves to cultivate their sugar and
cotton. These negroes naturally learnt English in the fashion in which
their masters spoke it. The white men have gone; the brogue remains. I
was much amused on going ashore in the Administrator's whaleboat, he
being an old acquaintance from the Co.
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