But among the multitude of inferior castes who do come there is a greater variety of feature and shape of skull than in an average multitude, as far as I have seen, of any European nation.

Caste, the physiognomist soon sees, began in a natural fact.

It meant difference, not of rank, but of tribe and language; and India is not, as we are apt to fancy, a nation: it is a world.

One must therefore regard this emigration of the Coolies, like anything else which tends to break down caste, as a probable step forward in their civilisation.

For it must tend to undermine in them, and still more in their children, the petty superstitions of old tribal distinctions; and must force them to take their stand on wider and sounder ground, and see that 'a man's a man for a' that.' The third thing noteworthy in the crowd which cooked, chatted, lounged, sauntered idly to and fro under the Matapalos--the pillared air-roots of which must have put them in mind of their own Banyans at home--was their good manners.