It is on market days that one can see in the Kingston high roads, and in the suburban lanes, groups of country women walking beneath heavy head-loads of garden produce. In all the world there is nothing more graceful than the carriage of a negro woman swinging along, with free and easy motion, under a head-load which would be heavy to an ordinary white man. With head erect, straight neck, chest flung forward, and arms swinging with unconscious freedom, the women present perfect examples of graceful strength. Their stride is long, and easy, and very regular. They are the most graceful walkers in the world. I have never seen a lady in Europe with a carriage as perfect as that of the ordinary Jamaica negro market-woman. [Illustration: A MARKET WOMAN, JAMAICA] THE PEOPLE OF JAMAICA CHAPTER IV THE PEOPLE OF JAMAICA At one time Jamaica was peopled by a race of red men whose beauty and timidity were the wonder and convenience of the little band of Europeans who were the first whites to tread the fragrant shores of the Pearl of the Antilles. To-day not a trace of these Caribs remains. Unfit for competition with the strenuous white or muscular black, the race, so far as Jamaica is concerned, has run its course. The red people are remembered only by the stone implements and rude pottery preserved in the Jamaican museum. Nowadays the island is peopled by whites--English, American, and those of Spanish blood; blacks--grandchildren of the slaves imported from West and West Central Africa; and half-breeds--yellow and brown people--the descendants of those intrigues of the white man and his black servant which, not many years back, were common among the people of the country.