CULTIVATION OF SISAL IN THE BAHAMAS. 611 



people of the colony, but also by outsiders, as the following facts 

 show. 



A company from St. John's, Newfoundland, has obtained a 

 grant of 18,000 acres of crown land at Abaco ; another tract of 

 20,000 acres on the same island has been allotted to a London 

 company ; 2,000 acres have been taken on Andros by a gentleman 

 from Edinburgh ; 1,200 are in process of cultivation on Inagua ; 

 but the largest application has been lately made by two London 

 companies, who together ask for 200,000 acres. Besides the large 

 plantations mentioned above, many small scattered areas go to 

 swell the total. Indeed, there have been so many demands for 

 crown land, that the governor has recently advanced the price 

 from one dollar and twenty-five cents to four dollars per acre. 



Now as to the character of the land. In Andros, which, as 

 above stated, is the largest of the group, and where most of the 

 writer's time was passed, the land is locally described by one of 

 three terms : it is either " coppet," " pine-yard," or " swash." The 

 coppet, which occupies, as a rule, the more elevated parts of the 

 island, is composed of small angiospermous trees, often only two 

 or three inches in diameter, and so close together as to make an 

 almost impassable thicket. Back of the coppet, which is mostly 

 a fringe along the eastern coast, nearly the whole interior is one 

 vast " pine-yard," made up of the Bahama pine (Pinus baJia- 

 mensis). The trees are generally small, and from ten to twenty 

 feet apart. Under them is very frequently a dense undergrowth 

 of a tall brake, which is often six or seven feet high, and is known 

 by the natives as " May-pole." 



" Swash " is a very expressive term to denote the low, swampy 

 ground, of which there are thousands of acres on the west coast. 

 Here the soil is soft and is composed of comminuted calcareous 

 particles ; it supports no vegetation except innumerable small 

 mangroves {Rhizophora mangle), here and there small " button- 

 woods" (Conocarpus erectus), a few "salt bushes" (Avicennia 

 nitida), and in some places palmettoes. So far as sisal culti- 

 vation is concerned, the "swash" is utterly valueless; but the 

 " pine-yard " and coppet are both available. In neither of these, 

 however, is there what we recognize here as " soil " ; and at first 

 it was a source of wonder to the writer that anything at all 

 could grow there, for the surface is very largely the bare coral 

 rock. However, it is rarely smooth, but is rough and jagged 

 with innumerable points and crevices, so as to resemble some- 

 what the appearance of a well-thawed mass of snow-ice. In most 

 places, also, there are numerous holes, from a few inches to many 

 feet in diameter ; and it is in these holes, cracks, and crevices 

 that what little earth there is can be found still, this little seems 

 sufficient to support the dense vegetation. Some of the other 



