Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/794

772 keeping his lands under wheat. The land occupier has seen his profit wiped out, and has been forced to obtain a reduction in rent, or to migrate to the towns, colonies, or foreign countries. The farm laborer, never in even a good position, has found precarious work, and has become migratory in his restlessness. This has been followed by a rise in wages, through the scarcity of farm hands, but the employers complain that under higher wages less and therefore more costly results are obtained. The value of land in the return for taxation shows a great shrinkage. In 1872 the value of lands in England so returned was £48,964,149, and it increased each year, reaching a maximum of £51,811,234 in 1877. In 1895 it had fallen to £39,680,346—a decrease of twenty-three per cent, or nearly one fourth. This becomes the more striking when compared with the rise in the value of houses from £76,475,194 in 1872, to £133,511,890 in 1895. From these figures it may be judged how severe has been the crisis in English agriculture, yet a crisis that has not permanently increased the cost of wheat and thus burdened the other industries of the empire.



ITHOUT indulging in too familiar details of an ocean voyage, let me briefly sketch some interesting features of my visit to Nassau in the month of March, for the island of New Providence is unique and interesting on account of its wonderful flowers and trees as well as the curious customs of its picturesque natives.

One interesting bit of the voyage from New York was the sight of the "Sargasso Sea," which we reached the third day out, after crossing the Gulf Stream. We came upon water of an intensely dark, indigo blue, filled with lovely delicate floating seaweeds, such as we had never seen before. It seemed impossible to believe that the water itself was entirely colorless, and one young lady on board insisted that the captain must be wrong in saying it was the same as the rest of the ocean; whereupon the captain ordered a bucketful to be dipped up, when it was found to be no bluer than the rest.

The next day we reached Nassau. Clad in our thinnest summer clothes, we left the steamer outside the bar and were taken on a tender up to the wharf, where the usual crowd of natives had gathered to see us land. For the most part they were a leisurely and good-natured lot of colored people, for negroes far outnumber the whites. Looking over the rail on the other side of the tender, an