44 



DRAINAGE. 



purest air, and amplest supplies of running water : 

 yet the people live — as we are apt to pity the poor 

 of the metropolis for living — in stench, huddled 

 together in cabins, and almost without water. The 

 wilfulness of this makes the fact almost incredible ; 

 but the fact is so. There are several causes for 

 this, all of which are remediable. The great landed 

 proprietors are, in too many cases, utterly careless 

 about the ways of living of their humble neighbours; 

 and those humble neighbours need enlightenment 

 about sanitary matters. They are also too often 

 at the mercy of their rich neighbours, who may 

 interest themselves about the building of handsome 

 houses for opulent persons, but never raise a cottage, 

 or will dispose of their land for sites. The labour- 

 ing class, therefore, suffer in health and morals as 

 much as the poor of great towns. In places where 

 the fresh mountain winds are always passing hither 

 and thither, and the purest streams are for ever 

 heard gushing down from the heights, and the 

 whole area is made up of slopes and natural chan- 

 nels, there are fever nests, as in the dampest levels 

 of low-lying cities. The general absence of poverty 

 makes the way to amendment open and clear. 

 There can hardly be a safer or more profitable 

 investment than cottage building here, for a good 

 dwelling is as convertable a property as a banknote. 

 The railroads, which some have so much feared, will 

 be no small blessing to the district if they bring 

 strangers from a more enlightened region to abolish 

 the town-evils, which harbour in the very heart of 

 the mountains. Meantime every systematic scheme 

 of drainage is a promise of better things to come. 



