CAUSES OF PROSPERITY. 13 



at once, and contended, young and old, in the most 

 boisterous cheering. Perhaps this meant Httle more 

 than the mere love of noise, as when boys cheer a 

 passing railway train, but it argued, at least, the 

 absence of any feeling of race animosity. 



The houses of the labouring population, whether in 

 town or country, are mere sheds, seemingly of the 

 frailest materials, the walls of thin upright boards, and 

 roofed with small imbricated wooden shingles, such as 

 one sometimes sees in Tyrol ; but there must be a very 

 substantial framework, or they would be annually 

 carried away by the August hurricanes. The interiors 

 appeared to be fairly clean, and in a country where 

 cold is unknown good houses are luxuries, not neces- 

 saries of life. 



One need not go far to seek the explanation 

 of the superior condition of Barbadoes as com.pared 

 with the other West Indian Islands. Unlike these, 

 there was here no waste land ; every acre was occupied, 

 and the emancipated negro could not follow the very 

 natural but unfortunate instinct which elsewhere led 

 him to squat in idleness, supporting life on a few 

 bananas and other produce that cost but a few days' 

 labour in the year. Apart from this, it is said that 

 the Barbadoes, unlike the Jamaica, planters showed 

 practical intelligence in at once recognizing the new 

 conditions created by the Act of Emancipation, and, 

 by offering fair wages and giving their personal in- 

 fluence and supervision, helping to convert the slave 

 into an industrious freeman. Whatever poets may 

 have fancied of the delights of lotus-eating, it seems 

 to be true in the tropics, as well as in temperate 



