The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-03-02

fashion, each with several large cnurcnes' two or possibly three centuries old, each solidly built, either of stone or or pricks. covered with plaster painted in bright colors. There is always a central plaza, and probably 1t Is planted with handsome trees and towering shrubs, with walks, and 1t may be a fountain. Usually there Is also an Alameda on the outskirts. The whole place has a certain air of dignity. It seems to feel itself city. with re- spectable past, even if fit has no ancient buildings and if it entirely lacks the tall piles and picturesque irregularity or anything of this in Jamaica, for even in the ancient capital. which the Spaniards called Santiago de la vega, ana Which now goes by the name of Spanish Town, inant race. The towns of Jamaica have much less of city air. Kingston, which Is far the largest, with a population Of 46. 900 (the others are little more than VII, lages) is entirely built of brick ana wood. The brick, often diiapidated, IS of an ugly color, and the wooden houses have a tumble-down look. There is a general air of squalor in the meaner streets and in the poorer suburps. wnlle even Tn the business parts of the town and in the villas of the richer people little has been done for beauty. one does not see the pretty patio which IS characteristic of the Spanish house--an internal court. with its tiny garden; g ana,
 
 ing severely practical people. nave built their warehouses, and offices, ana even their villas with a view solely to business and to comfort. They keep the streets in better order than the Cubans do, or did before the reforming energy of the United States began to work upon places like Havana and Matanzas ana Santiago. They provide better surface But Kingston. though the style in which houses are built. with a sort or orlck veranda or piazza raised above the street, gives it a kind of picturesqueness, IS rather mean-looking town. Tar less at- tractive than such places as Santiago or Cienfuegos.
 The Beauty of Jamaican Trees.
 The one merit of the Jamaican town Is the extreme beauty of the trees, many of them showing brilliant flowers, which lne the roads that lead out Of 1t; ana this merit belongs rather to nature than to the English. Yet, 1t Is fair to adu; when one speaks of the neglected ana semi-squalid air of the poorer parts or the Jamaican towns, that something IS que to difference of population. These towns are, except the warehouses and stores and the few villas of the Europeans, Tn reality negro towns. The negro. even when tolerably well off, has no care for neatness, and lives anyhow. In Cuba the negroes are countryfolk. In Jamaica they are the townsfolk also. Whether they are, as some say, more lazy ana less intelligent than their Cuban hreth- req may be doubted. They gre somewhat better educated for the English have taken more trouble to provide instruction for them, and the Protestant missiona- ries have been more active among them than the Catholic priests have been III Cuba. But they don't seem, taken all Tn all, to be superior to the colored people of Cuba, though they have enjoyed free dom much longer.
 There is another point in which the two Islands may be compared. Both are, or thinK themselves to be. commercially un- fortunate: and in both the planters as- cribe their ill-fortune to the action of other countries. Both have depended chiefly upon sugar cultivation. In Cuba and in Jamaica one hears nothing but complaints of the depressed state of su- gar cane and the impossibility of making a profit out of it. The Cubans lament the protective tariff of the United States. The Jamaicans bewail the hard-hearted- ness of England, which has hitherto re- fused to impose upon the bounty aided beet root sugar of Continental Europe that countervailing Import duty which would-so the Jamaican planters declare save them from ruin. In both islands foreign optimists suggest similar reme- dies telling the sugar men that If they would only introduce newer machinery they could hold their own easily against heet root sugar and advising the eXten- sion of orange planting. in which both islands ought to be able to compete sue cessfulIy with Florida, which has frosts to fear, and with Southern Europe, whose fruit is generally inferior to that of the West Indies.
 Jamaica Doomed to Remain Black.
 Here. however. the resemblance ends. Cuba needs labor and hopes to get it in greater quantity and in far greater eff ciency by the immigration of Spaniards: especially the industrious peasantry Of Northern Spain. Jamaica has labor enough. and must be content with the kind of labor which she has. for no Eu- ropeans will come in to work in a coun- try already tolerably well filled by col ored population. Black she is and black