The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-12-16
4 GLIMPSE OF DEMERARA.
(Continued from Fourth Pagel

(Continued from Fourth Page)
 The fierce heat of the day is gone. Ihere IS a delightfully."- cool breeze from the ocean. The air is soft and languid.
 me street so still and silent at noon mas fully awakened, the blinds are lift ea' the interior of the elegant tropical homes is plainly visible under the cleo trlc lights. There is music in the house or on the verandas. The fre-flies are dancing in the shrubbery Hundreds of
 bicycle lanterns like huge fire-flies are glowing in the street, for the wheelmen can only ride at night. Crowds arc promenading on the sea-wall. If the tropical day has been terrible the night is glorious. It is hard to believe that such night has succeeded such a day. and harder still to believe that this is a land of deadly miasmas.
 Water street, the principal business thoroughfare of Georgetown, is a most Interesting spectacle in the day time There is singular mixture of races, languages and costumes. There is more tiindostanee spoken in Georgetown than English, and quite as much Por- tuguese. The white people are about one-tenth of the population. The most numerous element is the negroes. The next is the coolies from the East h. dies. There are one hundred and fifty thousand of these in the county of De- merara. They add to the picturesque ness of the scene in the streets by the bright colors of their Asiatic costumes. Very often it is mixture of European and Asiatic dress; an old vest perhaps, with the wide brooches of the East, more often nothing but a very dirty shirt with a turban, sometimes a bunch ot dirty rags about the lOins, another just as dirty on the head, which passes as a turban. The coolies are socially below the negroes, but Intellectually their superiors. They have small, but very symmetrical and intelligent faces. They have even a singularly fine ex- pression of the eye. The women, many of them, are quite handsome They are almost as dark as the negroes, but brown rather than black. The prevail ing religion among them is Mohamme- dan, although there are many Brah- mins, and not a few Parsees among them. Mohammedan mosque is now building in Georgetown. The leader Of '4iS AhO4AetliilllCudll COOlltS IS NIHul MdL- mould Khan, a wealthy shop-keeper and a man of great intelligence. Every Fri day, the holy day of the Mohammedan, he gives presents to his poorer country men of the same faith, and in the morn- ing of that day a crowd of wretched eoolies may be seen squatting on their heels in front of his shop waiting for it to be opened
 The coolie system is said to be a sort of slavery, but think this is an exag- geration. They come from India bound by indenture to serve on the plantations for ten years. They receive about S1.25 a week, and this is not very much below the average pay of the laborers on the sugar estates in the West Indies. The laborers do not get as much as that in Barbadoes for instance. The plant CTS are bound by the articles to give them money enough at the end of the term of service to 80 back to India As rule, the cooiies do not return They seem happy and contented, and there is nothing to indicate that they consider themselves oppressed.
 The Chinese are numerous in Deme- rara, but they are of a much higher grade than those in the United States Many of them are wealthy and cultiva- ted.
 The principal industry of Demerara, as throughout the West Indies, is su- gar There was a day when sugar, | like cotton in the United States, was king: The planters were like great l feudal lords. There were estates which | netted over twenty thousand pounds | sterling a year. That day has long passed Sugar is no longer king, but | poor supplicating vassal. For years the more intelligent planters have been troubled about the future The price | of sugar has steadily declined, until at | present it does not repay the cost of | production. The planters have again | and again sought help from England | without getting it. There is a duty on beet sugar in the United States. the ob- ject of which is to stimulate the home | production of this kind of sugar. The West Indian colonies want England to i put duty on beet-sugar to offset the | American and European tariffs, or as | they term 1t, to put cane sugar and | beet sugar on an equal footing, but England will not do this
 The West India planters are sadly in heeu or assistance, put they utterly fail | to obtain any encouragement from the Imperial government naturally they are turning their eyes towards the Great Republic of the North. I am as- sured by one of the leading merchants of Barbadoes, possibly the leading mer- chant, that if reciprocity treaty could be made between the United States and the entire British West Indies, admit
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