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HON. E. STANLEY'S REPORT. 



rapidly into dilapidation and decay, and approachable only 

 by water communication, the roads and thoroughfares being 

 quite impassable. 



" That this is no over-drawn picture, your Excellency will 

 have but too fatally conclusive proof, but it may well be 

 inferred from the fact, that since that time, three cotton, 

 thirty coffee, and nine sugar estates in this county alone 

 have been totally abandoned, and are now relapsing into a 

 wilderness." 



Just before my arrival at Jamaica, the island had been 

 visited by the Hon. E. Stanley, M.P., who was on a tour 

 through the British possessions in the West Indies with the 

 view of informing himself accurately of their condition. He 

 has published the result of his observations in the form of 

 a communication to the Hon. W. E. Gladstone. As the 

 conclusions to which his visit lead him are quite different 

 from those to which I have been brought by my far more 

 limited opportunities of observation, I shall take occasion 

 in a subsequent chapter to notice his paper again. I only 

 refer to it now for the purpose of quoting from it some 

 illustrations of the declining condition of Guiana. Writ- 

 ing to this point he says : — 



"My next reference will be to an even more certain 

 authority, the official returns of the number of estates in 

 the colony, which at three different periods continued to 

 export produce. 



