the mongoose opens battle by moving around him in narrowing circles, the fer-de-lance watching him eye to eye. Slowly now, but outside the striking line, the mongoose trots around his foe, always keeping his ferretlike eyes on those of the snake. Then he breaks into a gallop, gradually increasing his stride, his pace becomes faster, and now he is rushing with the speed of a turbine. At last the pace begins to tell on the reptile. He has watched his enemy eye to eye all this time, and now his head is dizzy with the spinning. The muscles of the corrugated neck relax, the head sinks on his coiled body, the eyes close, when, as speeds the mauser, the mongoose is upon him, and all is over but the eating. The fer-de-lance has another enemy in the cribo snake. The cribo, though six to eight feet long, never harms man or child. He is always a welcome guest on the plantations, where he feeds on rats and mice, hunting around the "thrash"-roofed barns and outbuildings, scouting now and then through cellars and pantries. The superior speed of the fer-de-lance helps him out, but when the cribo corners him there is a dead fer-de-lance.

Another denizen of the island is the black scorpion, more feared by the bare-footed negro than the snake. Then there is the iguana, a lizard of giant wrack, an ugly and repulsive reptile, gnarled and knotted with warty excrescences, a disgusting and gruesome, but harmless creature, about three feet long, eaten by the blacks and pronounced by them to be excellent and nourishing food.

The chameleon of Guadeloupe is the most beautiful reptile on earth, and a marvel of transmutation of colour. When you meet him in the early morning this attractive little lizard is of olive tint, shot with bright and deep blue. When at noon you again see him he is of silver sheen, mottled with spots which change from deep olive into the most beautiful and brilliant tints. They were all on this volcanic island when Columbus landed, and as the island is one hundred and forty miles from the mainland, how did they get there? Are these islands of the Caribbean Sea all that remain of a submerged continent?

Nowhere in the West Indies, nor, indeed, in the world, is the creole seen to such advantage as in Martinique and Guadeloupe. Goethe's compliment, paid by the Princess Eleanor to Antonio, would be equally true if applied to the Guadeloupe creole. "All the gods have with one accord brought gifts to his cradle." Of finely chiselled features and lithe figures, the creoles of Guadeloupe, wherever you meet them, form a fascinating study.

The blending and mixing of hues and tints, the shadings, from the jet black of the Coromante negro down to the pale flesh of the Norman French, illustrate how the fusion of race with race was and is proceeding on this island; as this fusion progresses the distinguishing characteristics of the original races become less and less distinct, and a new type is evolved.

But to understand how this is brought about we

must go back to the origin of the creole in the West Indies. In the early days the unsettled state of these islands, haunts of sea rovers, pirates and buccaneers, the hardships of the long and stormy Atlantic voyage, the exaggerated reports of the awful heat and the absence of congenial society, deterred European women from approaching the Caribbean shores. The inevitable result followed. Enjoying entire immunity from all social restraint, fearing no rebuke from public opinion, and in most cases unrestrained by religious or moral law, the planters, agents and overseers entered into natural alliances with their female slaves and the daughters of the Arrawak Indians. From these unions were begotten the mulatto and the mustee. The terceron was the offspring of the white and the mustee, and the next in descent were the quadroon and octoroon.

To me all distinction of race disappeared in the octoroon, as I could perceive no visible difference in feature or colour between them and the whites. The mustees, mestizos, octoroons, and indeed many of the quadroons are sometimes fairer than the whites, but lack the endurance of the latter. "Well," I said to M. Julien Romain, who took the trouble to explain these variants to me the evening we sat on the balcony of the Hotel de France, "you have a phenomenal infusion of racial blood on this island.” "Not so bad, after all," he good-naturedly answered.

Speaking of this wonderful blending of races, only in the French West Indies has the word creole a distinct and honourable meaning. In Louisiana,

if we except New Orleans, the creole no longer exists, and in the British West Indies every one born on the islands, negro, coloured, and white is conventionally called a creole, though even in these islands the word creole is very seldom mentioned.

Criollo is derived from the verb criar, which in Spanish and Portuguese means to breed, to create, to produce. In Portuguese especially a criola is understood to mean a person born in the West Indies.

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When, in 1814, Bonaparte reëstablished slavery, after it was abolished by the directorate, he hedged in and protected the rights of the slave by his famous code noir." By that code all children born to whites and mulattoes became legitimatized, and the status of the creole born of a Christian marriage was henceforth socially and civilly recognized. Many of these children were sent to France to be educated, and returned with all the refinement and polish of their white confrères; so that to-day those of mixed blood are socially the equals of the whites, assuming their means and education to be equal. Still, I am told, that among this mixed race there is an unconscious selection ever tending upwards in a favoured direction towards the superior race.

In the British West Indies a different order of life is established. Not only will no white girl marry a mulatto, but she draws the line even at an octoroon, and draws it tight, and no dowry will tempt a white planter or merchant to lead to the altar any girl with the slightest taint of negro blood

in her veins. This is one of the most sinister features of the British West India social life, and bars all hope for the elevation of the coloured race.

In the days of slavery, prior to 1837, the clergy of the Church of England, and those of the Lutheran Church, refused to baptize the children of slaves, holding that since Christ had made them free by His passion and death on the cross, no planter could bind them to slavery, and to hold them in bondage after baptism was a sin against the Incarnation.

On the other hand, the priests of the Catholic Church in the Spanish and French slave colonies insisted on the sacramental marriage of the slaves after their conversion to Christianity, and on the baptism of the children, refusing sacramental absolution to the master till he consented to obey the laws of his church on this point. Henceforth the slave became the ward of the church, and, while kneeling and praying at the same altar, the equal of his master. This recognition of his immortality secured better treatment for him on the plantation, and created a public opinion in his favour which a brutal master was compelled to respect.

Here and in Martinique every office, civil and political, except that of governor, is open to the creole. Side by side with his white brother he works in the professions, in commerce, in the civil service, in the editorial room, and in the departmental buildings. In the British islands of the Caribbean Sea there is, with rare exceptions, no hope for him, and above that of school-teacher to the blacks it is idle