390 MEXICO, CENTRAL AMEEICA, WEST INDIES. 



feet. The climate of Mandeville, in the centre of the island, also enjoys a good 

 reputation. 



The decrease of the white and expansion of the black race have coincided with 

 a radical change in the cultivation of the land. The great sugar plantations, 

 which numbered 859 in 1805, were reduced to 300 in 1865, and in the same period 

 the annual export of sugar had fallen from 137,000 to 23,750 hogsheads, while 

 the coffee crop was reduced in like proportion from 10,000 to 1,350 tons. 



EcoiSioMic Condition of Jamaica. 



But if the great planters have disappeared, their former slaves have in their 

 turn become landowners, occupying small holdings on the redistributed plantations 

 where their fathers had worked under the lash. Few of these blacks will now 

 consent to toil for the whites, even when offered high wages. Most of them have 

 abandoned the workshops, and content themselves with tilling a bit of ground 

 near their cabins. During the eight years that followed the emancipation they had 

 acquired the absolute ownership of over 100,000 acres, and had founded two hun- 

 dred villages. As if to efface the painful memories of the plantation days, they 

 have changed their very names, selecting others from the almanack, from history 

 and mythology. The revolution is complete under the new order of things, and 

 on the vast domains that still remain the planters now employ coolies imported 

 from India, with a few hundred Chinese and Mayas from Yucatan. But since 

 1886 the importation of Asiatics has ceased. 



The land was formerly cultivated chiefly to enable a few families to live in 

 affluence ; at present the soil is tilled mainly to supply the local wants, and in this 

 respect the people have succeeded perfectly. The chief crops are maize, yams, 

 bananas, and other fruits, especially oranges. A small export trade is supported by 

 the cultivation of tobacco, ginger, and coffee. Bee-farming is also carried on in 

 some places, and cinchona was introduced in 1868 in the Blue Mountains, where 

 the rising forests are tended by the blacks ; the tea shrub thrives in the same district. 



The negroes have even begun to grow sugar on their own account, and some 

 of the old plantations are now parcelled out in as many as thirty little holdings 

 each with its own wooden mill. Other more enterprising growers have combined 

 to purchase more costly machinery, and thus increase the yield or improve its 

 quality. In general the people enjoy a fair degree of comfort, and the native 

 population increases on an average at the rate of 8,000 a year; in 1888 it rose to 

 10,000. Hence the case of Jamaica has been badly chosen by those political 

 economists who regard the falling off of foreign trade as a proof of internal decay. 

 The island has, on the contrary, become a centre of culture, especially for the 

 Central American coastlands from Yucatan to the isthmus of Darien, where 

 the development of trade and the industries is mainly due to the immigrants 

 from Jamaica. In this respect the island has had far greater influence in pro- 

 moting the general progress of the American populations than any other member 

 of the Antilles. 



