103 



cording to report, its size and luxuriance are inferior to what 

 it attains in Madagascar, the Isle of France, and the districts 

 of the East, more immediately beneath the Equator. Like 

 all gramineous plants, it delights in a radier moist climate. 

 Where the rains, however, are excessive, a rank luxuriance 

 is the consequence, unfavourable to the maturation of tlie 

 plant; the juices it affords being watery and deficient in the 

 saccharine principle, yielding on crystallization a dark 

 coloured sugar. Thus, in few parts of the island duci> more 

 raiu fall than in the parish of Portland. To the cyc^ few 

 spots can appear more beautiful than Golden- Vale — an 

 almost perfectly level plain, covered with a luxuriant vegeta- 

 tion, encompassed by lofty mountains, clothed to their sum- 

 mits with forest trees, which condense the vapours conveyed 

 over them by the prevalent easterly winds of the tropics. 

 The sky, however, being almost constantly overcast, the sti- 

 mulating influence of the sun's rays is too sparing to awaken 

 the energies of the plant to a proper exercise of the secretive 

 and assimilative functions, and the carbon and other ma- 

 terials taken up as nourishment suffer only a partial decom- 

 position; and, whilst the greater part escapes unaltered by 

 exudation and respiration, a portion only undergoes the 

 chemical changes by which it is converted uito the sweet or 

 saccharine principle. 



The Cane demands a fertile soil. We have an example 

 of a soil of this description in the Parish of Vere, which, with 

 all its disadvantages of climate, must ever rank, in proportion 

 to its size, as the most productive sugar district in the island. 

 On examination it will be found to contain all the ingredients 



H 



soil. 



mixed 



sand, together with calcareous matter washed down from the 

 neighbouring hills. Plantain Garden River, on the other 

 hand, which holds only a secondary rank as a sugar district, 

 is composed principally of alluvial matter, mixed with clay 

 and finely divided gravel; there being very little traces of 

 lime. It ought not to be forgotten, in valuing cane land, 

 that a fertile soil, such as that of Vere, possesses two advan- 



