A rapid
fortune can never be made by working a coffee estate. Years of
patient industry and toil, chequered by many disappointments, may
eventually reward the proprietor; but it will be at a time of
life when a long residence in the tropics will have given him a
distaste for the chilly atmosphere of old England; his early
friends will have been scattered abroad, and he will meet few
faces to welcome him on his native shores. What cold is so
severe as a cold reception? - no thermometer can mark the degree.
No fortune, however large, can compensate for the loss of home,
and friends, and early associations.
This feeling is peculiarly strong throughout the British nation.
You cannot convince an English settler that he will be abroad for
an indefinite number of years; the idea would be equivalent to
transportation: he consoles himself with the hope that something
will turn up to alter the apparent certainty of his exile; and in
this hope, with his mind ever fixed upon his return, he does
nothing for posterity in the colony. He rarely even plants a
fruit tree, hoping that his stay will not allow him to gather
from it. This accounts for the poverty of the gardens and
enclosures around the houses of the English inhabitants, and the
general dearth of any fruits worth eating.
Pages:
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111