The fall of sugar as we have said prostrated the West Indies for a time; and no Colony was so badly situated to sustain it as Jamaica, with her overwhelming debts, her wretched management, her financial disorders, and her laborers alienated from the sugar estates by persistence in treating freemen as if they were slaves. Lord Sligo stated, in an official report, that many of the planters threw estates out of cultivation in 1832, because they were so sure that the negroes would not work after the Act of Emancipation had passed. Then, when the fall of sugar came in 1847 a great many planters were obliged to abandon their estates, from inability to borrow money to carry them on. Mr. Bigelow states that, in 1850, there were 400,000 acres of sugar and coffee plantations abandoned to weeds and under-bush. But there is a recuperative power in Free Trade, as there is in Free Labor. The West Indies soon began to rise from the severe but temporary pressure, occasioned by the repeal of the Tariff. In some cases property passed out of the fettered hands of bankrupts to those, who being unincumbered, could take a fair start; while some of the old proprietors learned wisdom from experience, and managed more judiciously. Even Jamaica is coming in for her share in these beneficial changes. That her waste places are beginning to be restored is indicated by the following article from the _Kingston Morning Journal_, 1857: "On Monday last, the roads leading to Great Valley estate presented a lively appearance. Men and women, old and young, strong and weak, were all hastening toward a common point of attraction. Gaudy handkerchiefs were flying from flagpoles, the people were singing and dancing, and every thing gave token of a day much honored by the peasantry. It was no wedding or merry-making. They were in working clothes, with hoes and pickaxes on their shoulders. From every track and by-path came individuals to increase the crowd. All seemed happy and in haste. All were sweeping toward the gate of the Great Valley works. We said to an old man, whose head was white with the frost of eighty winters: 'Hallo! where are all these people going?' Taking off his cap, he answered, 'Me good buckra, me neber expect to see him Great Valley da rise. Him goin' for 'tablish cane; make sugar agin. Good for we all. Eberybody for help.' 'But you are too old to do any thing.' 'Da true, me massa. Me no hab trong. But me must do someting. Me fetch water. Me heart trong, do me han' weak.' To another we said: 'Where are you taking that cart-load of cane-tops to, my man?' 'To the Great Valley, sir. They are going to establish the sugar estate again; and I am carrying them all the cane-tops I have, to plant.' We said to a woman with a great bundle of cane-tops on her head, 'Are you going to the Great Valley, too?' 'Yes, sir. It's a great day for us all. Everybody must help.' To another, who headed a group of seventy or eighty children, we said, 'Where are you going, my friend?'