conflagration: yet multitudes of the houses which escaped that
visitation are standing empty, though the population is little, if at
all diminished. The explanation is obvious. Persons who have nothing,
and can no longer keep up their domestic establishments, take refuge
in the abodes of others, where some means of subsistence are still
left: and in the absence of any discernible trade or occupation, the
lives of crowded thousands appear to be preserved from day to day by
a species of miracle. The most busy thoroughfares of former times
have now almost the quietude of a Sabbath."

"The finest land in the world," says Mr. Bigelow, "may be had at any
price, and almost for the asking." Labour, he adds, "receives no
compensation, and the product of labour does not seem to know how to
find the way to market." Properties which were formerly valued at
£40,000 would not now command £4000, and others, after having been
sold at six, eight, or ten per cent. of their former value, have been
finally abandoned.

The following is from a report made in 1849 and signed by various
missionaries:--

"Missionary efforts in Jamaica are beset at the present time with
many and great discouragements. Societies at home have withdrawn or
diminished the amount of assistance afforded by them to chapels and
schools throughout this island. The prostrate condition of its
agriculture and commerce disables its own population from doing as
much as formerly for maintaining the worship of God and the tuition
of the young, and induces numbers of negro labourers to retire from
estates which have been thrown up, to seek the means of subsistence
in the mountains, where they are removed in general from moral