But for all this, the life of an indigo-planter is generally healthy and happy, and at all events it is more suited to the taste and disposition of most young Englishmen than the dull routine of a merchant’s office or a bank. Let us try to picture to ourselves the buildings and surroundings of the indigo-planter’s home. There is a cheerful and substantial house nestling in the shelter of some fine trees; there is a broad lawn, and a flower-garden full of roses and myrtles and variegated flowering shrubs. There is the well-stocked kitchen-garden with its constant supplies of English vegetables. There are the stables and coachhouses which we may presently inspect. There are the poultry-yards, where no small flock of fowls and ducks and geese and turkeys will be found. The rabbithutches are not neglected, and the pigeon-house literally swarms with pigeons. The sleek milch-cows, with their calves, have their appointed places; and you may be sure that there are good kennels for the dogs. A little apart from the dwelling-house the factory-buildings will usually be found, with the vats and apparatus for steeping and pressing the indigo to extract the dye, and the boiling-house with its tall and ugly chimney, and the drying-houses where the cakes of indigo are kept until it is time to pack and despatch them to Calcutta for sale. All the factory-buildings usually stand in one _compound_, as the local term goes, and this is in size almost equal to a small park, surrounded by a high grassy bank or fence to keep off trespassers, and usually studded with some fine groups of trees, in the shade of which the cattle take shelter from the mid-day heat. The English colonist is ever anxious to keep up the appearance of a comfortable English home, and not merely the appearance but the solid substance, so far as the difference of climate permits.