1801-1840]
REMARKS ON ISLANDS, 1819-22
105
tions, processions on feast days and rejoicings, in gifts to the churches, or in gambling. This anomaly of actions is the business of their lives. Too proud to consider themselves as Indians, and not sufficiently pure in blood to be acknowledged as Spaniards, they affect the manners of the last, with the dress of the first, and despising, are despised by both.[1] They however, cautiously mark on all occasions the lines which separate them from the Indians, and have their own processions, ceremonies, inferior officers of justice, &c., &c. The Indian repays them with a keen contempt, not unmixed with hatred. And these feuds,
- ↑ Such is, although in somewhat varying degree, the condition of half-caste classes everywhere. A vivid picture of their condition in India, which may illustrate that of the mestizos in Filipinas, is found in a book entitled That Eurasian (Chicago, 1905), by "Aleph Bey," the pseudonym of an American writer who had spent many years in India; he depicts, in terms both vigorous and pathetic, the origin, difficulties, and degraded condition of the Eurasians (or half-castes) there, and the oppression and cruel treatment which they encounter from the dominant white class.—Eds.
