The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-12-02

before the backsmlth's forge hor es stand waiting to be shod. A few Eng fish families are scattered about the neighborhood and the ladies thereof ride on horseback over the hills and across the fields, taking streams and hedges that come in the way in true English fashion. All the houses have open green-latticed verandas, and each prim, close trimmed lawn rejoices in its tennis court A large common is utilized as race-C1urse and cricket ground, with tennis courts in the cor ners, for wherever Englishmen live there those institutions are sure to be. A lawn-tennis club meets in the village once a week. The ladies who do not come cross-lots in the saddle, ride thereto in their pony-chaises; and they make tea under the trees, all as Eng fish as possible. Nearly everybody here abouts raises his own coffee, meat, poultry, fruit, vegetables--in short, nearly everything he eats and uses; and the women are notable housewives whose tea-cakes, salads and preserves are things long to be remembered.
 Vaudeville is the center of a large district, the best and most healthful portion of Jamaica, famed for the ex- cellence of its fruits and the sleek cat tie on its grazing groundse The red soil is mixed with crumbled Jumps of white coral. a ready-made and mex haustible compost. The temperature at this elevation is always at least ten degrees below that at Kingston, never cold and never oppressively hot.
 Yellow Jack is as much stranger here as Jack Frost, and the droughts which so often parch the lowlands are unknown among the hill-tops, where rain falls the year around. Riding about the neighborhood, you are more and more charmed with it. Gum trees. almonds, mangoes and cedars spread their shadows over all the roads, and great silk-cotton trees tower skyward in lonely magnificence, the haunts of the dreaded duppies or ghosts, who so the negroes believe-would wreak awful vengeance upon any mortal who would dare strike an axe into the sa- cred stems. All around are wooded slopes, with white-walled villas among orange and coffee groves. groups of palms, wind-mills and sugar-factories; and far beyond, the highest mountain range looks blue as the sky against which it seems to lean.
 Consulting the marginal notes made on this journey to Mandeville-thanks to my two well-posted travelling com panions-I am able to give you the fol- lowing reliable information. The prop erty-tax on farm lands in Jamaica, eul- tivated for sugar, coffee, grain, etc., is six cents the acre; for inferior land, two nho,, tax nf ,;x y+xy dollars year; shopkeepers, $37 50; and newspaper proprietors only $750 per annum. Five daily newspapers are published in Kingston, besides three weeklies, two semi -weeklies, seven monthies, three fortnightlies and a quarterly review. Verify this British province is not lacking in light litera- ture.
 Hotels pay license fee of one hun dred dollars a year in Kingston, and fifty dollars elsewhere in tho island. Some of the stamp duties are very heavy. Banking corporations issuing notes pay three hundred and twenty five dollars per annum. barrster pays seventy-fve dollars on his admis- sion; and a solicitor five hundred dol lars for his certificate. Postage on let ters going from place to place in the is- land is four cents each half-ounce, if prepaid; newspapers one cent; double rate is not prepaid. Telegraphy is cheap in Jamaica compared to other places in the West Indies. A cable gram from Kingston to New York costs a dollar and half each word, address included. The constabulary consists of seven hundred men, one hundred anc ninety of whom are stationed in Kings ton. The legal qualification of a con. stable are that he must be able to rea6 and write, and must measure not less than thirty-tWO inches around the chest and five feet six inches in height
 Then he receives the munifcent salary of eighty-five cents day! There is { reserve rural police, to be used wher called upon Of these, the head men ,. one in every seven-are paid sixty dol
 lars year, and thirty-one cents day additional when actually on duty. Labor of all kinds is cheap in Jamai ca. The ordinary wages of carpenters and brick layers is seventy cents a day and their helpers get thirty-fve cent. } each. A teamster, with his cart ant
 two mules, or three oxen (which h.
 
 and half for twelve hours toll. Foot ! costs about the same as in New York except that here the best beef is only twelve cents pound. Strange to sa, salted beef is twice as high, and sal pork from sixteen to twenty cents thu , pound. Clothing is cheap, such as 1 } is. Ready-made hand-sewed shoes = cost dollar the pair: and a mans fel
 hat sixty cents. Good English tweed ) and other cloths bring much less her than the usual price for the same il London.
 The annual product of rum, thougl greatly diminished in recent years stil reaches the respectable figures eff any ! thing pertaining to rum can be called 7 respectabe), of two million five hun dred thousand gallons a year. To off set that there are fifteen lodges of Goot Temp7ars on the island. and worl l enough they find to do. Free Masonr. : flourishes in Jamaica. There are thre 7 grand lodges-the Provincial Gran( Mark Masters Lodge of England, tn Provincial Grand Lodge of Scotland l and the District Grand Lodge of East ern Jamaica. Odd Fellowship has als, r been introduced, with feeble off-shoo of the Daughters of Rebecca. Ther } are Knights of Pythias, too, ant l Knight of Malta, besides several othe secret organizations, whose mysteries
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