wrote _Punch_, and it represents the feeling of a large section of the community, a section to which I know I should have belonged. _Punch_ does not enter into the question as to why there should be “savages thirsting for bloodshed and plunder,” and “miscreants burning for rapine and prey.” Those were not the question of the moment. They are questions for all time. We think now, we are all agreed, black and white, that there must be no bloodshed and plunder, and there must be no section of the community to whom such a state of things shall seem desirable. CHAPTER XII--JAMAICA AS I SAW IT Dorinda came home from church. She had on a neat, blue cotton dress, a snow-white handkerchief was wrapped round her head, her pretty black feet were bare, and her comely dark face stood clear cut in the evening light against the white wall of the house. “What church do you belong to, Dorinda?” “Baptist, missus.” So she was one of the Black Family, the church that bravely tried first to teach the slaves. “And have you been baptised?” “No, missus. I'm an enquirer.” It troubled her mistress a little that Dorinda often felt the strong need to “enquire” sometime, when the table should be laid or the silver cleaned. But an “enquirer” exactly represents my attitude towards Jamaica. I'm an enquirer still, though I lived there for over eighteen months, and every day I learned something. Indeed, much to my surprise, I find I sometimes appear to know a great deal more than many of the people who have lived there all their lives. It reminds me of an American tourist I met once at the Myrtle Bank, Jamaica's principal hotel--“My dear,” she said, “I've been a great traveller of late, and I'm just full up of information, mostly wrong.” Still, there are some things I can see for myself. They are forced upon me like a slap in the face. Kingston was a disappointment. It is a dust-heap, somewhat ill-kept; there is none of the lush luxuriance of the tropics one expects from its latitude. Out of Kingston--in it too for that matter--it is very difficult for those not blessed with a superfluity of this world's goods to live in Jamaica comfortably, simply and inexpensively; the mosquitoes are a nuisance, the ticks run them a very good second, and the post office facilities are the very worst in the world. Having relieved my mind of my objections to the country, I may say I have found it a lovely land, its people as hospitable and kind as its post office is bad--which is saying a good deal--and I enjoyed my stay there so much that I wanted to settle there. When I first landed, it struck me the country was black, and then I learned its nationality. “What countrywoman are you, Frances?” I asked the lady who condescended to destroy my clothes under the pretence of washing them. Frances grinned all over her black face--well, not exactly black but mahogany red, with a skin so fine the greatest lady in the land might envy her.