210 HISTORY OF THE [BOOK n. 



Of breeding and grazing farms (or, as they are com- 

 monly called in the island, pens) the number is about 

 ] ,000 ; to each of which I would allow 700 acres, 

 which gives 700,000, and no person who has careful- 

 ly inspected the country, will allow to all the minor 

 productions, as cotton, coffee, pimento and ginger, 

 &c. including even the provision plantations, more 

 than half the quantity I have assigned to the pens. 

 The result of the whole is 1,740,000 acres, leaving 

 upwards of two millions an unimproved, unproduc- 

 tive wilderness, of which not more than one-fourth 

 part is, I imagine, fit for any kind of profitable culti- 

 vation; great part of the interior country being both 

 impracticable and inaccessible. 



But notwithstanding that so great a part of this 

 island is wholly unimproveable, yet (such is the pow r - 

 erful influence of great heat and continual moisture) 

 the mountains are in general covered with extensive 

 woods, containing excellent timbers, some of w r hich 

 are of prodigious growth and solidity; such as the 

 lignum vitae, dog-wood, iron-wood, pigeon-wood, 

 green-heart,, braziletto, and bully-trees ; most of which 

 are so compact and heavy as to sink in water. Some 

 of these are necessary in mill-work, and would be 

 highly valuable in the Windward islands. They are 

 even so in such parts of Jamaica as, having been long 

 cultivated, are nearly cleared of contiguous woods; 

 but it frequently happens, in the interior parts, that 

 the new settler finds the abundance of them an incum- 

 brance instead of a benefit, and having provided him- 

 self with a sufficiency for immediate use, he sets fire 



