ng these
desolated districts have sometimes, in the strong language of a speaker
at Kingston, 'to seek about the bush to find the entrance into their
houses.'

"The towns present a spectacle no less gloomy. A great part of Kingston
was destroyed, some years ago, by an extensive conflagration: yet
multitudes of the houses which escaped that visitation are standing
empty, though the population is little, if at all, diminished. The
explanation is obvious. Persons who have nothing, and can no longer keep
up their domestic establishments, take refuge in the abodes of others,
where some means of subsistence are still left; and in the absence of
any discernible trade or occupation, the lives of crowded thousands
appear to be preserved from day to day by a species of miracle. The most
busy thoroughfares of former times have now almost the quietude of a
Sabbath.

"'The finest land in the world,' says Mr. Bigelow, 'may be had at any
price, and almost for the asking.' Labor 'receives no compensation, and
the product of labor does not seem to know how to find the way to
market.'"[178]

From the report made in 1849, and signed by various missionaries, the
moral and religious state of the island appears no less gloomy than its
scenes of poverty and distress. The following extract from that report
we copy from Mr. Carey's "Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign:"--

"Missionary efforts in Jamaica are beset at the present time with many
and great discouragements. Societies at home have withdrawn or
diminished the amount of assistance afforded by them to chapels and
schools throughout this island. The prostrate condition of its
agriculture and commerce disables its own population from doing as much
as formerly for maintaining the worship of God and the tuition of the
young, and induces numbers of negro laborers to retire from estates
which have been thrown up, to seek the means of subsistence in the
mountains, where they are removed in general from moral training and
superintendence. The consequences of this state of matters are very
disastrous. Not a few missionaries and teachers--often struggling with
difficulties which they could not overcome--have returned to Europe, and
others are preparing to follow them. Chapels and schools are abandoned,
or they have passed into the hands of very incompetent instructors."

We cannot dwell upon each of the West India Islands. Some of these have
not suffered so much as others; but while some, fro