great rush of people to new lands, the criminal, the pauper and the deficient escape close scrutiny, and bring their evil intentions or afflictions with them to fresh fields. The nation of their origin escapes its responsibility. Upon the people to whom they go is thrust the burden which rightly belongs elsewhere.

Many of these objections to large immigration might be overlooked, or the evils so administered as to deprive them of much of their threatening character, if the communities receiving these people had extended an invitation and needed this new population. They do not, however, for even the conscientious and worthy advocates of asylum for the oppressed of all lands are beginning to realize that charity begins at home, that the oppressed alien can crowd the labor market equally with the freeman, that the political refugee, afflicted with disease, is as dangerous to the community as the man who leaves his own country without cause.

The emigration movement from one country is the immigration movement into another, or perhaps a dozen others. The evils, political or economic, which drive a quarter of a million people from a country each year most certainly concern the countries which receive these people. The steamer which brings this freight to a foreign shore operates under two or more flags. All countries are concerned with keeping their own useful citizens at home. All countries are concerned in preventing the ingress of foreign criminals, deficients or diseased. Emigration has unquestionably become an international affair, and, until it is so treated, complications and evils resulting therefrom can only be partially and quite ineffectually controlled by each nation acting for itself, independently of all others.

All countries have laws and regula

tions governing the admission of aliens. These laws are of wide variety, however, and range from mere enumeration to prohibition. Nearly all of the civilized peoples have recognized the dangers of imported disease and the unRedesirability of foreign criminals. straining laws are generally in force providing for inspection by medical authorities and forbidding the ingress of notorious criminals. With the exception of some international exchange of courtesies in the matter of criminals, there is up to the present time little or no co-operation among nations to help each other to secure desired results. The United States has taken the lead in imposing restrictions upon immigration, and by a roundabout method has inaugurated a system of inspection at several of the larger foreign ports of embarkation which, while necessarily not entirely effective, is working satisfactorily as far as it has gone.

The Government of Italy maintains a close supervision over departing emigrants, attempts to restrain the soliciting of transportation business, and will not allow the conduct of emigrant traffic to countries not desirable as places of residence for Italian citizens. While avowedly restrictive in its intent, the Italian law is far from effective in keeping people at home, for the cause of the emigration lies deeper in the economics of the country. When these shall be readjusted-which happy event is a possibility of the future-and the conditions under which the people of southern Italy live shall become more bearable, the depopulation now in progress will subside, if not cease altogether.

Barring such beneficial effect as the emigration restrictions of countries like Italy and Austria-Hungary may have in checking the exodus, the American law presents the only feature directly bearing upon international co-operation. No alien is allowed to land in the

United States if he or she comes within the prohibited classifications, whether such alien is intending to remain in the United States or to proceed at once to some foreign country. In this manner the United States protects Canada and Mexico, and any other country reached via American territory, from the dangers of imported disease and the addition of criminals or deficients to their populations.

To carry out the idea of international co-operation in matters of emigration, let it be supposed that an international conference of all the Powers was held, to exchange ideas and, if possible, reach some mutually satisfactory basis for an agreement. There would be many conflicting interests at work, and many differences of opinion to be adjusted. It might, and probably would, take much time and several meetings before an understanding could be reached, but there would be some important points upon which, in spite of possible differences as to the best methods, all would promptly agree as to the principles involved. No country desires to lose its useful citizens. To minimize this evil, a general agreement could be reached to enact laws forbidding undue effort on the part of those interested, to secure passenger business. Severe penalties could be provided for violations of this restriction, and still greater penalties for inducing people to leave their homes through false representations as to prospects for employment, opportunity, or wealth elsewhere. Italy already has such a law, but the operations of the promoters are carried on just beyond her borders, and the effectiveness of the law greatly lessened.

To secure harmony in establishing a standard of admission would be more difficult, but the United States and the great nations of western Europe would probably agree, except in some minor matters regulated by local needs or

conditions. If aliens are to be admitted to a country not calling for them, it is a self-evident truth that the better the character of these aliens the better for all concerned. An international agreement to guard against the spread of disease could meet with no serious objection. To exercise sanitary and discriminating supervision over all public carriers is already a part of each nation's business, but this could be so enlarged and extended as to include special reference to emigration and immigration. An international exchange of police information is now carried on to a certain extent, but it is devoid of system, and a bureau of intelligence could be organized which would make an offender against the laws of his native land an object of watchfulness throughout the civilized world.

The free movement of deficient persons having been checked, each country would be forced to assume its full responsibility in the care of its own. The greater and most highly civilized nations are doing this now, and their intentions are honorable and humane, but there are countries where the Governments and the people are prone to evade the burden, and, if possible, shift it to the shoulders of others.

One of the greatest benefits which might come to the world from such cooperation among nations would be the power for good in the correcting of notorious evils of government. The moral force of such an alliance would be tremendous, and the physical force, should it become necessary to exercise it, overwhelming and decisive. Oppression in any part of the world which had the effect of driving multitudes of people from one country to another would become the concern of all. Wrongs would be righted on demand. either willingly or through policy, for the principle would have been established that the countries into which people are moving are directly and

justly interested in the affairs of the countries from which these people come. Emigration from one place becomes immigration into another. The Fortnightly Review.

It

is an international affair of gravest importance, and should be speedily recognized as such.

James Davenport Whelpley.

Once again I behold the blue hills of beautiful Jamaica. Is it any wonder that I feel strangely as I see them? My mind flies so swiftly back to the thirty odd years ago, when, a child full of wonder and unsatisfied longings, I sailed these blue waters, first saw these lovely shores. How keenly, vividly do all the circumstances recur which I have recorded in "The Log of a Sea Waif." But most clearly I remember, as emphasizing the whirligig of fortune, the changes of a few brief years, my lying bound upon the schooner's deck, bidden to pray, as I was about to be drowned as a sacrifice to the ignorant superstitions of that brutal gang of barbarous men; and now, to revisit the scene of so much suffering under the very pleasantest conditions, able to enjoy to the full all the varied beauties of the sea and shore, seemed almost too great a change to be really true. The morning was delightful, with that splendid freshness only felt on tropical shores near dawn, but I regret to say there were few on deck to share the joy with me. It really is a very great mistake, which is continually made by voyagers in search of pleasure, especially ladies, that they do not seem able to tear themselves from their beds until the first bloom is off the day; and the loss is much greater when, as at this time, the ship is coasting along such a beautiful shore.

Presently the low-lying spit upon which famous or infamous old Port Royal stands, known as the Palisades,

is seen stretching out like an attenuated arm into the sea, its extremity pointing out to the first group of coral islets and reefs we have seen this voyage. We steer almost directly for the point, and soon discern the pilot awaiting us in a canoe, as used to be the case thirty years ago-no change here; and the men who handled that canoe were just as clumsy as usual. One would think that long practice would have made them expert at coming alongside of a ship, especially one moving as slowly as the Tagus is now. But no, before they are able to tranship their pilot to us our jolly captain's patience is sorely tried, and he calls sharply from the bridge: "Are you going to keep the ship here all day?" That, however, is but the beginning of his annoyance, for upon reaching the end of the spit upon which Port Royal stands the ship is stopped, and lies for nearly half an hour awaiting the coming of the health officer, customs officials, etc., who all seem to be quite unaware of the fact that by their dilatoriness they are keeping his Majesty's mails and his Majesty's lieges from England waiting an unconscionable time.

Now while I sympathize fully with the captain's most justifiable impatience, I feel a secret delight in being able to have a thorough survey of this most interesting spot, where over thirty years ago I used to come out at night from Kingston and fish with friendly negroes. I recall, too, the stories I was then told of the buried town of Port

Royal, and the belfry of the submerged cathedral, which, so the legend says, reverberates during hurricanes with the clangor of its bells swinging far beneath the sea. Of all this blood-stained history of Port Royal, its shelter to the buccaneers and pirates, its horrible licence and curious law, at such a time as this, and under such circumstances, one can do little more than catch occasional mental glimpses. The gory old days, with their splendid halo of romance, are clean gone, and in their place remain to my Philistine and bourgeois satisfaction the trim, clean, and punctual steamship, with her crowd of eager curious tourists and her comforts so nearly approximating to those of a well-appointed hotel ashore. I cannot help feeling like this; perhaps it is the effect of middle age, but having experienced some of the miseries of the romantic life of the sea, the glamour of that time long past is discounted, and beneath it I see poor human flesh groaning and travailing under its awful burden. No wonder men dared and did so much when life was a possession hardly worth the keeping, when death meant, at any rate, surcease from known woes, release from unnameable tortures, and the future, dark, unknown, and dreadful, promised at least a change from the intolerable agonies of the present.

Hurrah, we are free to depart for Kingston. The engine-room bell clangs viciously as if the officer of the watch had been able to impress it with his strong sentiments. Obedient, the good ship swings round the point and speeds towards the city of Kingston-a place of so many vicissitudes of fortune.

As we steam slowly along the seafront of the city, with its bright-looking houses embowered in tropical vegetation, it looks a very pleasant and picturesque place, but awakens no memories in my mind. It has changed so much in thirty years. I note with

great satisfaction how well, solidly, and neatly the wharves are built and kept, and mentally contrast them with the ramshackle piles of lumber which do duty for wharves in the mighty city of New York. It is one of the mysterious anomalies which Americans seem to delight in, this of having side by side public works and buildings of equal importance, one set of which will seem built for eternity, and the other apparently ready to fall to pieces at a touch. It lends an air of instability and want of permanence to some of America's greatest cities. There has not been a single port out here which I have visited, not even those on the Spanish Main-such as Limon, Savanilla, La Guayra, or Colon, where the ship lies at a wharf-where her wharfage has not been incomparably superior to that given to ships of four timesthe tonnage in New York; and I am sure I cannot tell why.

Our big ship comes gently, certainly, into her berth, with hardly a sound heard except the occasional clang of the engine-room bell and the shrilling of the boatswain's pipe at intervals. Without delay she is moored, and a gangway laid so that whosoever will may walk ashore; and here I felt my first desire to complain. For ladies in summer dresses and gentlemen in light clothing to have to run the gauntlet of a host of coal-carrying or cargohandling negroes, in an atmosphere of coal-dust, and amid all the varying unpleasant odors of a tropical cargo warehouse, is annoying, to say the least of it, especially after the extreme cleanliness of the ship; and if there be any wind blowing the place where the cabs. stand in the company's yard, and where passengers must needs board them, is a place of horror, for clouds of coal-dust, sweltering heat, noise, and smells. Worse still, although I would not say it is always the case, the wharf on sailing days, for a hundred feet

from the gangway, is thronged, packed with negroes of both sexes, clean and unclean, through which crowd it is necessary to bore one's way, subjected to ribald remarks in volleys, and in absolute danger of personal violence from lewd negroes of the baser sort. It was really the first time that I saw anything to complain of during the trip, but it was, and is, a very serious grievance, which is why I set it down here, for I feel sure that it has only to be known to the heads of the company to be promptly remedied. They will, at any rate, be assured that I have not exaggerated in the least.

Here I landed at once, and with the majority of the passengers who were going on with the ship, drove out to the beautiful Constant Spring Hotel, about three miles distant from the town. Kingston itself was full of interest, but at that time of the day intensely hot and dusty, and crowded with busy traffic. In fact, its general air of bustle and activity gave us a most favorable impression of its prosperity, and the many fine shops, full of buyers, did much to deepen that impression; but the condition of the streets and sidewalks was very bad. It seemed as if the American custom of neglected thoroughfares had full hold of the municipal authorities, although I gladly admit that I saw no streets as bad as I have seen in Chicago, Boston, and New York, to place them in their order of demerit. There is also a very fine service of electric cars, run on the trolley or overhead wire principle, and the track, as well as the standards supporting the wires, was kept in English fashion-that is to say, incomparably better than I have ever seen in America. The speed at which the cars travel, however, is almost as great as it is in the United States-that is to say, about double what is allowed in England.

The ride up to Constant Spring is a

charming one, and the crowds of negresses in spotless white, bearing burdens on their heads, with an easy swinging gait, are an interesting study, but they lead to a deepening of the impression that in these islands the women do most of the heavy labor. It is natural, I suppose, and without it the labor problem out here would become very acute, but it grates unpleasantly upon our senses as a kind of topsyturvy idea-a remnant of savagery. And so along a wide, pleasant road, lined by houses large and small, standing in their own richly wooded grounds, and in many cases bounded by living fences of pillared cacti, we reach the lovely grounds of Constant Spring, and catch our first view of the fine tropicallooking building nestling at the foot of the hills, which stretch away upward, fold upon fold, until their richly clothed summits are lost in the rolling mists. Here, through a long trellised corridor, resplendent with the glorious flowers of the Bougainvillea, we emerge upon the front stoop of the hotel, commanding a beautiful view over the adjacent country. What a contrast everything presents to the dear sober tints of home! Under the white-hot sunshine the glaring colors glow again; they smite the eye with a sense of vividness never gained at home except under the artificial conditions and intense light of a well-managed pantomime. Indeed I have repeatedly remarked to friends, upon coming out into the morning glow at Constant Spring, that it reminded me of a scene at Drury Lane, so brilliant and blazing were the colors. Oh, it is an intense land, and one that would appeal, must appeal, to the artist and philosopher equally, for it opens up new problems and pictures at every turn with unstinting hand.

I do not pretend to understand the situation out here at all, but I confess that it seems to me that something must be radically wrong with the man