to the plain unvarnished tale of official impartiality. That ordinary individuals should fall into an error of this kind, is less strange; that public officers, nay even Government itself, should -occasionally do the same, and consequently go astray on those very topics where everything lies ready mapped out for the mere trouble of looking at it, is 'strange, passing strange' indeed.

To the traveller, whether statistician or not, the signs of prosperity-all the more gratifying to behold because, though recent, it is well-based and evidently progressive are apparent everywhere throughout the island, from St. Thomas in the southeast to furthest Hanover and north-west point. We will not linger about Kingston, once, if old accounts, Mr. Bigelow's included, be true, one of the slovenliest, dirtiest, unhealthiest towns in the West Indies, now on the contrary one of the best arranged, best cared for, most thriving among them. We leave to others the praises of the New Victoria Market, the just pride of Sir J. P. Grant, and the like of which we ourselves had not expected to see at a distance from France and her model Halles;' of the handsome and costly landing-place, and quay; of the churches, theatres, and other buildings, creditable to the public spirit, if not always to the architectural good taste, of the inhabitants; of the spacious tree-shaded walks, and gardens gorgeous with clustering flowers; nor must we loiter among the crowded streets, the busy shops and stores, the noisy wharves, the harbour dense with boats and shipping, and whatever else betokens commercial activity, and prosperous business. These things are, we should add, common in their proportionate measure and degree, to most other seabord towns of Jamaica, to Falmouth, Montego Bay, Lucia, Black River, Old Harbour, and the rest. Nor will the traveller-guest, either in the capital or the provincial ports, fail to be welcomed by the same easy hospitality and social cheeriness that have always characterised the mercantile no less than the other classes of Jamaican society. These particular topics lie, however, somewhat beside of our actual scope. Great as is the commercial importance of Jamaica, brisk and rising its trade, yet agriculture rather than manufacture, produce more than traffic, are and will always be the main props of her wealth; nor is it so much among the town populations as in the rural districts that the solution of her many problems must ultimately be found. Nor, when all is said, are we quite sure that the recent transfer of the centre of Government from Spanish Town to Kingston, that is from an atmosphere of estates, plantations, and 'penns,' to one of stores and countinghouses, was exactly a wise one, or, in every respect, a gain. Not even the convenient proximity of mail steamers on the one

side, and of the cool St. Catherine heights on the other, can, to our mind, make up for the park-like slopes, the green hills and dales, the spreading groves, and the Rhine-like scenery of Rio Cobre and St. Thomas in the vale. Nor, truth compels us to say, can the mixed and busy character of a port like Kingston, however favourable to intelligence and smartness, quite admit of the dignified 'repose that stamps the caste' of the landed proprietor and old-established resident, or the quiet, composed, and courteous refinement that,—with no disparagement to others be it said, even yet pre-eminently grace the society and the beauty of Spanish Town. Had the gallant Rodney been still alive on the 15th February, 1873, we much question whether the removal of his person from the neighbourhood of the Spanish Town ball-room might not have been harder to effect than that of his statue. But we are treading on dangerous ground, 'ignes suppositos cineri doloso;' and we hasten accordingly from the glare and revelry of streets,' to 'the boundless contiguity of shade,' enough to have realised Cowper's every wish, beyond; and the calmer, yet not less useful tenour of the country life beneath its ever-green shelter.

A narrow, but solidly-constructed, carriage-road leads us along, sometimes winding as we go between the abrupt, cone-shaped, thicket-topped hills so frequent in Jamaica; sometimes among waist-deep pastures of luxuriant guinea-grass, the sight of which might rouse pleasurable emotion even in the broad breast of a Herefordshire grazier; then by brimming pools set in emeraldgreen meadows and sparkling streams rushing down the slopes; then we pass along the rocky ledge of a precipitous torrentgully, overarched high in air by interlacing foliage, where the transparent green of the cotton-tree is variegated by the denser leaves of cedar and sandbox, and the graceful stems and feathery tufts of palm, cocoanut, or palmetto pierce an opening amid the horizontal boughs and blackish tints of the lofty umbrella-tree; till we emerge on an expanse of open ground, long since cleared of bush and underwood, and where tufted acres upon acres of vigorous cane-growth announce the 'estate." For in Jamaica sugar-growing properties alone claim this title all others are 'plantations' or 'penns,' as the case may be. We pass through the outer gate; the very negligence that has left it half open and swinging tells of security without suspicion and plenty above jealousy of pilferers. Next a long avenue of trees, varied in kind, but all ornamental, American, Indian, African, or Japanese even, marks our approach to what is and has been for generations past the abode of English habits, English taste, and English comfort. The large, irregular, verandah-girt dwelling

e;

itself,

itself, often not a quarter of a mile distant from the sugar-factory, with all its hamlet-like adjuncts of trash-houses, stables, backyards, sheds, negro cottages, and the like, shows indeed now-a-days few tokens of the rollicking, lavish, too frequently spendthrift profusion of bygone times; nor need the visitant of our generation hope or fear to witness beneath its high-pitched roof anything resembling the uproarious orgies, Bacchic or other, of which Tom Cringle supplies so many a spirited description, or perhaps a caricature. But in the well-kept 'smooth shaven-green' of the lawn outside, in the patterned colours of the flower-beds, in the jet of the little garden fountain, in the flower-entwined verandah, no less than in the polished massive woodwork, dark cedar alternating with yellow fustic, of floor and ceiling, in the panelled walls, in the plate-garnished sideboard, in the solid but handsome furniture, in every detail of the accessories of domestic life, we read prosperity allied with sobriety, wealth with taste. It is English life, adapted, indeed, to the tropics, but English still, and that pleasantest of all, county English. English, too, in the best sense of the adjective, is the activity without, in the sugar-works and distilleries, where the improvements of more efficacious and more economical machinery, superseding the unintelligent clumsiness of slaves and the supercilious wastefulness of slave-owners, have diminished the number of hands employed, while increasing the quantity of and improving the quality of the work done. Ride out among the fields through the yellowing cane, watch the heavily-piled waggons that bring it into the mill; survey the planting and the cutting, the newly-set piece,' like green stars ranged in rows on the marly soil, and that other dense mass of stalk and leaf which negro cutlasses are already busy at cutting down, and you will see plenty of good argument for satisfaction both of master and men; while you look, if so disposed, but look in vain, for evidence of the indolence and discontent with which the free negro task-labourer is so often credited, for the best of all reasons, that of indolence there is really little, and of discontent none at all. And if from secular habit, and in an exceptionally dry season, the groans of the planter' first uttered, or at any rate published in 1670, may still be heard rising amid the estates of two centuries later, you will soon discover that, like the groans of Cowper's farmer at tithing-time, they are chiefly uttered in vindication of the Briton's privilege to grumble, then often most despairingly when he is really best off. And in fact nearly thirty-seven thousand hogsheads of sugar and twenty thousand puncheons of rum annually exported from the island sufficiently prove that, in spite of reduced prices and raised wages,

of

of competition and free-trade, the cane is yet, and rightly so, a favourite, and even a principal article of Jamaican cultivation. That it is no longer an exclusive one need not arouse regret.

Canon Kingsley, whose 'At Last,' amid much that is onesided, sensational, and erroneous, contains a great deal of interesting information, and occasionally of sound reflection, rightly ascribes a large share in the financial decline of the West Indies, the decline that began with the pacification of Europe in 1815, and was brought to a climax by the meddlesome rashness of Lord John Russell and Earl Grey in 1846, to the almost exclusive attention paid by the planters to the production of sugar; and in this judgment he is right. He is in great measure right, too, when he lays at the same door the gradual deterioration of tone among the upper classes and of labour among the lower; nor is he wholly wrong when he accuses the canefield of having kept back from its due increase the European element in these regions. And certainly Jamaica was no more meant we ask Professor Tyndall and Co.'s pardon for the teleological expression to bring forth cane alone, than England corn, or France vines. This was the fatal error of the eighteenth century planters, who, to an especial facility of production, and a high market value at the time, sacrificed all else—soil, labour, intelligence, skill-all that made up the real and abiding capital of the island, for one immediate, but insecure gain-put, in common parlance, all their eggs in one basket; and when that basket was as ruinously upset as ever was Alnaschar's sat down bewildered and helpless, because untrained themselves to anything else, and surrounded by the untrained of their own making, Alnaschar like, to wring their hands and cry.

It is otherwise now; and a wider wisdom has taught, or is fast teaching, the West Indian colonist to resume, but with the modifications suggested by fuller experience and exacter knowledge, the work of his first fathers, and to seek in variety of produce a sure guarantee against failure or stagnation; while by the same act he keeps in exercise both his own wits and those of his labourers; and thus lays the foundation of enduring prosperity for himself and them on the two firm corner-stones of nature and intelligence, not on the shifting sands of artificial regulations and price-tariffs.

Look up now at those rapid slopes, rising thousands of feet in height, crossed by rocky ledges tier above tier, once abandoned as unfit for cane-growth, or compelled, it might be, to render a scanty and precarious, because an unsuitable crop. Bear in mind that certain soils, certain altitudes, certain levels, are essential to the full success of the cane, while mountain sides

rarely

rarely furnish the quality or the depth of earth required, nor, above a moderate altitude, the proper temperature; and remember that Jamaica, however wide its well-watered plains and noble savannahs, especially near the sea-coast, is essentially and to its own great good fortune a mountainous island. But look again: far up among the slopes stretch broad irregular patches of dark green bush, studded in spring time with white star-like flowers, thick sprinkled in summer with red-brown berries, amid the glistening leaves, there large-boughed trees, planted up and down as if at random, or rather, where the rocky soil permits, shelter the unripe coffee-berry from the too rapid heat of the sun, particularly in the low-lying plantations nearer the plain; higher up no shade beyond that supplied by the plant itself is needed for the fruit. Introduced in 1728, coffee has been ever since a favourite article of Jamaican cultivation, and one of the few that even the tyrant sugar did not temporarily banish from the island; subsequently it managed to hold its own through the worst times of depression, and now the bush scarcely yields precedence to the cane itself. It has the advantage, too, of being less absolutely dependent on a favourable season. Again, fewer hands, lighter labour, and much less outlay of expense are required in the coffee plantations, on the drying flats, and in the cleaning sheds than are demanded by the cane-field and the sugar-factory; and hence this variety of agriculture is better adapted than the other to small proprietors and limited means. Seldom, indeed, does the abode of the coffee-planter rival the 'estate' in size or comfort, yet the small houses perched among the hills have their own peculiar beauty, as their climatic advantages; and though the production of coffee alone will hardly make a man wealthy, yet, taken in conjunction with other crops, it is a valuable and trustworthy auxiliary.

Passing on, we come next to a hilly patch of broken ground, and a soil comparatively poor; and here aromatic groves of pimento trees, requiring of their owner little labour except that of gathering and drying the fruit, supply a profitable, though a somewhat uncertain crop. Of much greater intrinsic value, and in the early times of Jamaica so highly esteemed that its plantations amounted in 1670 to forty-seven-a large number, if the comparatively narrow extent of soil then cultivated in the island be taken into account-the cacao-bush is beginning to re-assert its place among the rest, and will undoubtedly one day assume a distinguished rank among Jamaican products. Indigo, too, once not unsuccessfully grown, will probably reappear; it might, indeed, advantageously occupy many a spot now covered by useless and unhealthy swamp. Nor is the time, we may rea

sonably