ing bosom of this little
island. Here too are slopes of hills, and broad savannas, where "the
grass may almost be _seen_ growing," and where may be bred cattle fit to
compete with the far-famed herds of England. The forests are full of
mahogany and logwood. The surrounding waters swarm with fish of every
variety, and of the finest flavor. Nominally, at least, the people are
free and self-governed; and if, under propitious skies, the burdens
either of the private home or of the state are heavy and crushing, it is
because of mismanagement and not of necessity. To a casual observer,
therefore, it would seem as if nowhere in the same space were gathered
more elements of wealth, prosperity, and happiness than in Jamaica.

* * * * *

Yet Jamaica is poor and discontented, and from year to year is growing
more miserable and more full of complaints. While on the little island
of Barbadoes, which is flat and comparatively destitute of natural
beauty, the inhabitant is proud to the verge of the ludicrous of his
home, the Jamaican, dwelling amid scenes of perpetual loveliness,
despises his native soil. And not without reason. For Jamaica presents
that saddest and least flattering sight, a land sinking into hopeless
ruin. Her plantations are left uncultivated. Her cities look time-worn
and crumbling. Her fields, which once blossomed like the rose, are
relapsing into the wilderness. She does not feed her people. She does
not clothe them. She does not furnish them shelter. With three hundred
and fifty thousand negroes she has not sufficient labor. With twenty
thousand whites she has not employers enough who are capable of managing
wisely and paying honestly what labor she has. With a soil which Nature
has made one broad pasture, she does not raise the half of her own beef
and pork. With plains which ought to be waving with luxuriant harvests
of wheat and corn, her children are fed from our overflowing granaries.
With woods filled with trees fit for building, she sends all the way to
the Provinces for shingles, joist, and boards. On her two hundred swift,
sparkling rivers there was not, in 1850, a single saw-mill. In an age of
invention and labor-saving machines, the plough is to her a modern
innovation; and her laborers still scratch the soil which they seek to
till with tools of the Middle Ages. Even the production of sugar, to
which she has sacrificed every other industrial interest, has sunk from
the