When I read about Garden Cities in England, and the necessity for women emigrating, I am full of wonder why someone with a little money does not start an agricultural colony in Jamaica. I can see no reason why the beautiful land should become the exclusive property of the rich fleeing from the northern winter. It should be an ideal place for people who are not rich, especially for women. Here is eternal summer, here are beautiful surroundings, here is a fertile soil crying out for cultivation, here is a large peasant population waiting for employment, here is an ample fruit supply, here should be milk and eggs and chickens in abundance; here is no need of fires and furs, of winter clothing, of carpets and curtains, of heavy bedding. If a woman go to Canada or Australia she must use her hands--it will do her no harm, but many women do not like the prospect--but in Jamaica for many a long day to come there will be labour in plenty crying out for a guiding hand. All it seems to me that is required to make such settlements a great success is a little money--you cannot have land and plan to work it for nothing anywhere--a little common sense, and they would be a boon not only to Jamaica but to the Empire. Only one thing, two things, perhaps, I would insist on. All the windows must be built as are those in the south of France and in Italy--like doors that open wide and let in an abundance of air, and not as they make them in Jamaica, sash fashion, after the custom of cold England. And no settler must live in a mosquito-proof room. He must clear away the mosquitoes. They talk about the Jamaican negro as dishonest, but I think that is to be attributed to ignorance, and will mend with better wages and better education. My servants, low as were their wages, might have been trusted as a rule with my money or my jewellery or even my clothes, and they only pilfered the flour and sugar and such like commodities which, considering they fed themselves and these things were dear, was putting their sins on a par with that of the boy who steals sugar or apples; but there is a form of larceny in Jamaica which is very crippling to industry, and which I have not heard of in any other land. The Jamaican peasant cannot for the life of him help predial larceny, that is field larceny. He steals not only from the well-to-do man with a large acreage, but from his neighbour and his friend. Before the yams are ready for digging, or the corn ready to be cut, comes along the predial thief and relieves the owner of a large portion of his crop. Whenever any man plants he must put in enough to supply the greedy robber, who is too lazy to plant for himself. Everyone expects part of his crop to be taken. It is the curse of the country. “Missus,” said a black boy to Miss Maxwell Hall, “you buy my corn when him ripe?” “Have you any corn, Cyril?” He rejoiced in that high-sounding name. “Got good big plot, missus. Him ripe soon.”