lish language, and amenable to discipline and instruction,
though little accustomed to it until recent
years. There are perhaps 20,000 Asiatic coolies.
Industry and trade have languished much of the
time since the abolition of slavery, on account of
the difficulties of the labour question, the depression
of the sugar interest, and the slow progress of adjustment
to new conditions, the reasons for which
are not far to seek. T h e imports of Jamaica amount
to about $12,000,000 a year, substantially one half of
which come from Great Britain and the other half
from the United States. T he exports are valued at
$10,000,000, of which coffee now figures as the
largest item at $1,500,000, sugar next at about $1,-
000,000, and rum $800,000. T h e relative decline in
sugar in recent times is very great. Tobacco is of
growing importance, and there is a chance for a far
greater variety in the cultivated productions of the
island. There is the beginning of a railroad system,
a main stem from Kingston to Spanish Town with
branches into the interior north and west, about one
hundred and twenty miles in all, but scarcely more
than one fourth of the land has been brought under
cultivation. Industry is almost wholly confined to
garnering the products of the soil and sending them
out of the country. Telegraphic communication
has been well established throughout the island and
with the rest of the world.
There has long been a state of discontent in
Jamaica on account of the depressed condition of
trade, which is attributed largely to the subsidising
of beet-root sugar in Europe and the duty on cane