‘The strategic importance of the Euphrates valley railway’ [‎26] (171/204)

2G
I
paid civil servants cannot afford this luxury, and so
have to spend their nights as well as their days in
sultry Spanish Town or Kingston.
As Sir John is an old Bengalee, and knows the
benefit it is to India to have the virtual capital at
Simla during the hot months, he will perhaps agree
with the writer The lowest of the four classes into which East India Company civil servants were divided. A Writer’s duties originally consisted mostly of copying documents and book-keeping. that the capital at Mandeville, with a
Parliamentary season, would be beneficial to the
island.
Colonies of white settlers on the central range of
mountains, would be useful to Jamaica in two ways;
they would ensure security, and increase production.
If districts in the hills, where the sun is not so hot as
to prevent a European from working, and which are
now uncultivated, were set apart for organized colo
nies of white men, who held their grants of land on
condition of military service, or service with the
police, and these lands they were not allowed to
alienate on any terms, various centres of civilization
would be formed, and preserved, and secure nuclei of
resistance to any attempt at rising among the blacks,
would probably prevent such being thought of. The
present constabulary are trusted neither to put down
a general insurrection nor to repress crime, the militia
and volunteer! which each parish used to furnish,
have been systematically snubbed, and finally swept
away by the Governor, and now the European troops
have been reduced to five companies, a force quite
inadequate to the wants of the island. If four settle
ments were formed in the mountains, each of three
hundred families of time-expired soldiers of good