the “coloured” people represent nearly twenty per cent, and the remainder of the population is made up of whites, Indian coolies, and Chinese. The ten thousand coolies at work on the plantations in the interior have become a force in the island, and they are destined to play a considerable part in the commercial salvation of the country. The negroes are, of course, the descendants of the slaves imported from Africa in the days of the slave trade; the coloured class are the offsprings of the union of the whites with the blacks, or of the half-breeds with the negroes. The coolies are of recent importation from India, and the Chinese have come, no one knows how, to trade with the negroes in up-country districts.
In the days of old, Jamaica waxed fat on the profits of her sugar estates and the rich prizes of her rum trade. Fortunes were made almost without effort or exertion by old-time planters. Sugar was sold at absurdly high prices, and the planters cultivated their plantations entirely by slave labour.
The Emancipation Act of 1834 flung the industries of the island out of joint, and although the Imperial Government granted compensation to the extent of nearly six millions sterling to the owners of the three hundred thousand slaves they had liberated, the dry rot of decay set in, and Jamaica fell from her high position among commercial communities. The richest planters sold out their plantations and returned to the old country; the poorer planters who remained in the island were terribly handicapped for lack of labour. The freed slaves refused to work for their late masters, and the labour difficulty set in. Factories were forced to stop work; fields lay unplanted and untended for lack of workers. And this labour difficulty has remained more or less acute from that day to this. It was believed by the authorities that the introduction of the ten thousand coolies would help to solve the difficulty. The negroes had built for themselves little huts, and were content to live on the native fruits and vegetables. The pleasant indolence of their new life suited their tastes to a nicety; the rewards offered in return for their labour were neither sufficient nor in any way attractive. The warm climate and rich soil were all the Jamaican African required to make his life all that he desired. Sugar plantations were abandoned and rum factories were shut down, and poverty came to the land of wood and water. Naturally the white people resented the idleness of the blacks, and several eruptions occurred; the Gordon riots, and other disturbances less notorious, were directly caused by the impatience of the whites and the impertinence of the blacks.
Fine as is the picture of those three hundred thousand Africans climbing the mountain sides of their island prison-home in order that they might face the sun on the morning of the emancipation, we must not ignore the prospect of the valleys, lying in the deep shadows of those mountains, which were to be half desolated by the glory of that sunrise. If the black men were willing to work as hard now, or even half as hard, as their fathers once were forced to work, we should hear no dreary stories of Jamaica’s poverty. The island has got an ideal climate, a marvellously productive soil, and labourers in plenty; it lacks but the spirit of labour. The natural wealth of the country is vast enough, but the harvesters are idle and unwilling to work. The fact that the Government was forced to bring ten thousand coolies from distant India to work in the plantations and factories is a lasting disgrace to most of the five hundred thousand black men and many of the hundred and fifty thousand coloured folk. The pity of it is that neither of these classes seems to feel the sting of the disgrace. The negro has in his being no instinct for labour; the women only are willing workers.
Solve the Jamaica labour problem and the commercial problem will solve itself.
The climate of the island is as nearly perfect as any climate can hope to be. It is a country of perpetual sunshine and blue skies. The heat of the day is tropical, but it is always tempered by cool sea breezes; and when the sun has gone the evenings and the nights are deliciously cool and refreshing. The island is really possessed of many different climates. The towns and villages among the hills on the mountain slopes are always cooler than the cities of the plains. The climate of the place has always been grossly maligned by people of the homeland. On my first journey out to Jamaica I imagined that I should find the place filled with yellow fever and malaria; I thought of it as a sort of West Africa—only a little worse. And I found it the most pleasant and healthy place imaginable. In spite of all the statements and statistics to the contrary, the conservative people of England still believe that a journey to the Queen of the Antilles includes the risk of yellow jack. Fevers there are, of course, just as in England there are coughs and colds; and I would choose a Jamaica fever before an English cold. Yellow fever is a disease which attacks you when you least expect it, and leaves you quite dead, or nearly so. It is an uncanny, unwholesome thing, and is not a respecter of persons. Really, for all practical purposes, Jamaica is free of yellow fever; the disease has been stamped out. People die of it even to this date; but even England is not entirely free from smallpox. Yet one cannot describe smallpox as one of the characteristics of our little island. In the same way it would be foolish to associate Jamaica with yellow fever.
The Jamaicans discuss the disease with dispassionate, respectful dread. It is a thing to be avoided; if met face to face it must be combated with heroism, and a particular remedy peculiar almost to every inhabitant. Many there are alive on the island who have had the yellow jack and lived; many more there are who still mourn the loss of those who bowed before its malignant power. The younger colonists—those people who have lived there only ten or fifteen or twenty years—talk of the ’97 outbreak; the old inhabitants speak of the last real epidemic, the ’77 affair. So and so went down then, and poor old what’s-his-name died in two hours. I met one man who told me of a picnic he gave in the mountains some seven years ago. Sixteen guests sat down; eight died of yellow fever before the year closed down. That would be in the ’97 outbreak. But these are rare cases.
Malarial fever is common in the towns and some parts of the country in Jamaica, but it is a little fever without strength; it is not dangerous. There is no malignant malarial. Though Jamaicans contract malarial as frequently perhaps as Englishmen catch cold in London, the malarial is not so dangerous as the cold. So it is not of much account. Jamaica is a pleasanter place to live in than London, but new arrivals should adapt themselves to the condition of things. Clothes and habits admirably adapted for the English climate are generally out of place in a tropical island.
The staple products of the island are entirely agricultural. Jamaica has embraced the fruit trade. Half the total value of her exports is represented by her over-sea trade in bananas, oranges, grape fruit, and pine-apples. The sugar and rum trades take secondary positions, but coffee is rapidly coming to the front.
To-day the island has little political significance save for the fact that it is a strong naval base. It is probable that the completion of the Panama Canal will give to it a more important status in the political world. With the opening of the new ocean route to the East, Jamaica will become a naval base of the utmost importance to Britain.
THE TOWN OF KINGSTON
CHAPTER III
THE TOWN OF KINGSTON
The town of Kingston is made up of mean streets crammed with little bungalow houses, filled to overflowing with people coloured in all the shades of black and yellow.
