FAR AND NEAR 



and kills all native enterprise. If a new industry 

 starts, it is taxed out of existence. I was told of 

 several that had been thus killed. They literally 

 tax the wheels o£P the wagons, the tax being about 

 five dollars a wheel. A man is afraid to make any 

 improvement about his house, — to add another 

 window, or to put on a piazza or a new roof, — lest 

 his taxes be increased. I heard of an American who 

 took an automobile there to make a tour of the 

 island, but the sum demanded by the authorities 

 before they would allow him to land it — something 

 over a hundred dollars — was so great that he went 

 back home with it on the steamer's return trip. 



Hence I say that the tax-gatherer is the incubus 

 that weighs down Jamaica. The people are exces- 

 sively taxed, largely to pay big salaries to the tax- 

 gatherers. The governor, quite a useless personage, 

 it seems to me, is paid five thousand pounds a year, 

 and there is a long string of oflEice-holders below 

 him, grading down to the poKce commissioners, that 

 all draw big pay. Imports are taxed. Every fam- 

 ily that buys a barrel of flour pays two dollars to 

 the government. 



The roads and bridle-paths in Jamaica symbolize 

 England ; they are England clasping the island as 

 with a many-fingered hand. You walk or ride along 

 these superb imperial highways and look out upon 

 a land semi-savage; civiHzation under foot, and 

 barbarism just across the fence, — httle or no agri- 

 274 



