The higher class of coloured persons, which embraces a large portion of the community, I have already slightly glanced at; but still my work would indeed be incomplete did I not more fully endeavour to portray their worth and superiority. These are men, who, if not educated in England, have received the best instruction the West Indies could afford, aided by their own strenuous endeavours for information. Hospitable in the highest degree, with a hand ever open to grasp in friendship that of the strangers whom fate or the winds may lead to their pretty little island; living in an easy elegance of style—the possessors of warm and generous thoughts—the doers of high and noble actions— patriots in the full sense of the term, their services ever at the command of their country; of agreeable conversation and polished manners; these are the characteristics of many of our Antiguan coloured gentlemen. Their wives and daughters are, in several instances, as unexceptionable as themselves, and perform their social duties in the same pleasing manner.
Within the last few years, the young people have been more generally educated in England, and many of them exhibit superior talents, and have attained to no mean proficiency in the fine arts. Their manners, too, are, with but few exceptions, very graceful; their voices soft and mellifluous; and although, perhaps, rather more silent than in the present age is expected of women, what they do say is generally to the purpose.
Among these young daughters of a glowing clime, many very beautiful girls are to be met with. With a sufficiency of _embonpoint_ to prevent the appearance of any “right angles” in their frame, they possess a sylph-like movement and an elastic step; while the large, black liquid eyes, the glossy jet hair, the long eye-lashes, and the soft olive tinge of their complexions, relieved by rosy lips and dazzling white teeth, would form no bad model for one of Mahomet’s _houris_.
Our sweet little queen has, unwittingly, done much to improve their beauty, in wearing her own fair hair in the simple style she does. As true and loyal subjects, the Creole girls can do nought but follow the example of their royal mistress; and the massy bunches of curls, which tended to give their features a degree of thickness really not their own, and caused them to look more sallow by the contrast, have given place to the more elegant, Madonna-like bands and braids.