now complained of (excepting the potato blight and rot, which are
both common diseases in the Island), together with the poor crops
obtained, and the general barrenness of the fruit trees, will not be
remedied so long as the existing system, by which all the vitality
of the Island is drained away, remains unchecked. The whole of the
manure, which accumulates from stables, stockyards, &c., in the
town, is thrown into the sea, instead of being conveyed up the hills,
and returned to the land. By this long-continued practice the
lands have become almost exhausted. Moreover, a large quantity
of guano, collected around the coast, is exported to Europe, instead
of being used in the Island, and it is much to be regretted that the
Government permit it, merely for the sake of swelling the revenue
by a paltry charge of 10s. per ton exportation fee. With such a
system continually at work, is it surprising that the farmer obtains
but a poor crop, and fruit trees blight and dwindle away? rather is
it a matter of astonishment that he obtains any return at all. Forty-
two years ago General Dallas, then Governor of the Island, was fully
alive to this most ruinous system, and, with a view of supplying some
practical means for lessening the cost of conveying the manure from
the town up the hills, and back to the lands in the country, caused the
erection of the ladder or inclined plane. This engineering work,
carried out under the directions of Lieutenant G. W. Melliss, an
artillery officer, comprised a ladder 900 feet in length, with upwards
of 600 steps, communicating up the side of the hill from Jamestown
to Ladder Hill, at an angle of 39° or 40°, with a tramway
on either side, upon which waggons, in connexion with ropes and
machinery at the top, travelled up and down. By this means
manure was conveyed up an almost perpendicular height of 600
feet and deposited, from whence it could easily be conveyed by
the farmers. A secondary use of this “ St. Helena Railroad was
to convey stores from the town to the garrison stationed in the
Fort of Ladder Hill, and, as it would be most invaluable for both
these purposes in the present day, it is very greatly to be regretted
that the whole construction has fallen into disuse and bad repair,
the woodwork being eaten by white ants. Indeed, it is said that
these insects visited Ladder Hill through the medium of its
longitudinal wooden sleepers.
An excellent stimulus to farming interests has also been ^allowed
to die out with “ The Agricultural and Horticultural Society,” which,
twenty years ago, held its bi-annual vegetable, fruit, flower, and
cattle shows, awarding prizes for the finest specimens..
There are in the country 266 distinct properties, with about 200
houses, valued at 66,000/. I t naturally strikes a stranger as remarkable
that, with so much available land—and good land too, for the soil
which is produced by decomposed basaltic rocks is well known to be
amongst the very best—the number of cattle and sheep should be so
small in proportion, and still more so that these are, to a large extent,
imported from the Cape of Good Hope. Also that no articles for
export are produced, though many useful plants grow in abundance;
salt could be obtained by evaporation of the sea water; fir
timber could be cut on the Island; and yet these things are imported
; and while any amount of yams could be easily grown, as
was done formerly under the East India Company’s Government,
the whole native population prefer to live upon rice imported from
the East Indies. The farmers even seem barely able to exist upon
their highly-mortgaged properties, which, in many instances, have
passed into the hands of the most moneyed mercantile firms of the
place, and the result is a monopoly, with complete stagnation of
agricultural interests. There are a comparatively large number of
handsome country villa residences, with 80 or 100 acres of land
attached, well suited for gentlemen’s seats, but many of them are
now vacant so far as the house is concerned, while the land is but
half cultivated. The finest property in the Island is the Governor’s
official residence, called “ Plantation House,” a well-built, moderatesized
mansion, containing forty rooms, standing in the midst of 176
acres of picturesque park land, crowded with oaks, Norfolk pines,
Scotch firs, and other handsome trees from temperate as well as
tropical climes. I t was erected in 1791, is distant nearly three and
a half miles from the town, at an elevation above the sea of 1791
feet, and is worthy of a visitor’s attention, who will do well, however,
to totally disbelieve the guide boys’ anecdote when they point
out a huge cave in the rock on the side of the lawn, as the place
where Sir Hudson Lowe confined Napoleon, in order that he might
■ watch him from his front door steps.
Nothing can be more deplorable than the state of the Island at
the present time. The ships calling at the port, the chief trade of
the place, lessen day by day. Formerly, when almost all vessels
coming from the East were compelled to make some intermediate