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The next morning was bright and mild, with a fresh breeze. Alexander felt the need of exercise even before he came out of his cabin. When he went on deck the sky was blue and blinding, with heavy whiffs of white cloud, smoke-colored at the edges, moving rapidly across it. The water was roughish, a cold, clear indigo breaking into whitecaps.
His mother and the other women were given white cotton he thinks it may have been duck dresses "every now and then", he states, but none of the women really had to confine themselves to white, "cause they'd dye 'em as soon as they'd get 'em." For dye, he says they would boil wild indigo, poke berries, walnuts and some tree for which he has an undecipherable name.
Three of them cheapness, strength, and colour were possessed by the old-fashioned true indigo-blue denim the delightful blue which faded into something as near the colour of the flower of grass, as dead vegetable material can approach that which is full of living juices the possession of these three qualities doubled and trebled the amount of its manufacture until it lost one of them by masquerading in aniline indigo.
The bird may feel it as he soars, on a bright August morning, high above amber cliffs jutting out into indigo seas; the novelist may feel it when the four walls of his room magically disappear and the profound secrets of the universe are on the point of revealing themselves. Honora gazed, and listened, and lost herself.
Without-side these fences they plant a row of a prickly kind of bamboo, which forms an almost impenetrable hedge from twelve to twenty feet thick. June 23rd. We walked through a level woody country to the kampong of Lumut, and next day to Satarong, where I observed several plantations of benzoin-trees, some cotton, indigo, turmeric, tobacco, and a few pepper-vines.
Negro slaves were also imported to work alongside the redemptioners in the tobacco, cotton, ginger, and indigo crops, and soon proved their superiority in that climate, especially when yellow fever, to which the Africans are largely immune, decimated the white population.
The army of occupation had obviously established a firm footing in the hospitable premises; a kaleidoscopic pattern of uniforms, sky-blue, indigo, and bottle-green, relieved the civilian attire of the groups that clustered in lounge and card rooms and corridors. Yeovil rapidly came to the conclusion that the joys of membership were not for him.
But the indigo is ill-prepared, and the dyeing as badly done, and the consequence is, the cottons are very begriming in the wearing. The indigo plant is simply cut, and thrown into a pond of water to ferment with the articles to be dyed, and after a short time the cottons are taken out, dried, pressed, and glazed with gum. It is these dark cottons which the Touaricks are so passionately fond of.
Indigo production was decadent; and rice culture was in painful transition to the new tide-flow system.
When Mexico becomes one of the United States, all Central America will soon follow. Railways will be pushed from the north into the tropics, and a constant stream of immigration will change the face of the country, and fill it with farms and gardens, orange groves, and coffee, sugar, cacao, and indigo plantations. No progress need be expected from the present inhabitants.
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