DEPRECIATION OF PROPERTY. 



57 



The Caen-wood sugar estate, which once cost £18,000, 

 was offered by its present owners, but found no purchasers, 

 at £1,500, and its cultivation has been abandoned. 



The overseer of Friendship Valley estate used to receive 

 a salary of £120 per annum for his services ; he has been 

 offered the whole estate within three years, for £120. 



Fair Prospect estate, which used to yield five hundred 

 hogsheads of sugar, and was valued at £40,000, was sold 

 in 1841 for £4,000, and now would not bring anything 

 like that sum. 



Ginger Hall, which used to yield £1,200 sterling per 

 annum, has since been sold for £1,400. 



Bunker's Hill estate, which had been mortgaged for 

 £30,000, was last sold for £2,500. 



A sugar estate lying in the parish of St. Thomas, in the 

 East, embracing 1,000 acres of land, with a good dwelling 

 house, works, machinery, copper stills, and other appropri- 

 ate fixtures, was put up at auction in 1847, in Kingston, 

 and sold for £620. 



Provision lands about the Rio Grande river, which had 

 never been opened, and which were exceedingly produc- 

 tive, have been sold for one dollar per acre, and I was 

 informed by the Governor, Sir Charles Grey, that he knew 

 of ten thousand acres of land, lying all together, which 

 could now be bought for £1,000, or for about fifty cents 



an acre ; indeed, what is yet more extraordinary, a culti- 

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