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CHAPTER XII. The Darien canal — Jamaica mail packet — Captain W. — Retrospect of Jamaican history —Waterspout at sea — Hayti — Jacmel —A walk through the town —A Jamaican planter —First sight of the Blue Mountains — Port Royal — Kingston — The Colonial Secretary— Gordon riots — Changes in the Jamaican constitution.
more to Barbadoes, but merely to change there from steamer to steamer. My course was now across the Carib bean Sea to the great islands at the bottom of it. The English mail, after calling and throwing off its lateral branches at Bridgetown, pursues its direct course to Hayti by Jamaica, and so on to Vera Cruz and the Darien canal. This wonderful enterprise of M. Lesseps has set moving the loose negro population of the Antilles and Jamaica. Un willing to work as they are supposed to be, they have swarmed down to the isthmus, and are still swarming thither in tens of thousands, tempted by the dollar or dollar and a half a day which M. Lesseps is furnishing. The vessel which called for us at Dominica was crowded with them, and we picked up more as we went on. Their average stay is for a year. At the end of a year half of them have gone to the other world. Half go home, made easy for life with money enough to buy a few acres of land and ‘ live happy ever after.’ Heedless as schoolboys, they plunge into the enterprise, thinking of nothing but the harvest of dollars. They might earn as much or more at their own doors if there were any one to employ them, but quiet industry is out of joint, and Darien has seized their imaginations as an Eldorado. ONCE
If half the reports which reached me are correct, in all