ever visited."[15]

The productiveness of the soil is immense. Fruits of every variety
abound; vegetables of every kind for the table, and Indian corn, grow
abundantly. The island is rich in dyestuffs, drugs, and spices of the
greatest value; and the forests furnish the most celebrated woods in
the greatest variety. In addition to this, it possesses copper-mines
inferior to none in the world, and coal will probably be mined
extensively before many years. "Such," says Mr. Bigelow,--

"Are some of the natural resources of this dilapidated and
poverty-stricken country. Capable as it is of producing almost every
thing, and actually producing nothing which might not become a staple
with a proper application of capital and skill, its inhabitants are
miserably poor, and daily sinking deeper and deeper into the utter
helplessness of abject want.

"'Magnas inter opes inops.'

"Shipping has deserted her ports; her magnificent plantations of
sugar and coffee are running to weeds; her private dwellings are
falling to decay; the comforts and luxuries which belong to
industrial prosperity have been cut off, one by one, from her
inhabitants; and the day, I think, is at hand when there will be none
left to represent the wealth, intelligence, and hospitality for which
the Jamaica planter was once so distinguished."

The cause of all this, say the planters, is that wages are too high
for the price of sugar. This Mr. Bigelow denies--not conceding that a
shilling a day is high wages; but all the facts he adduces tend to