32 CUBA AND POBTO 1UCO 



like arrangement. Again, there are small stretches of 

 swamp-land, and alluvial plains at the months of rivers. 



The resources of the Antilles are also more varied than 

 those of the other islands, for they not only produce the 

 chief staple, sugar, in great quantities, hut yield abundant 

 crops of coffee, cocoa, exp< rtable fruits, cattle, and food- 

 stuffs. 



The only important metallic mineral resources of the 

 West Indies are found in the vicinity of the Autillean 

 chain. These are iron, manganese, gold, and copper. 



The total population of the Great Antilles is nearly 

 3,700,000 people, threefold that of all the other West 

 Indian Islands combined. This population is diverse in 

 race and color, and has distinct local peculiarities, which 

 will be treated elsewhere. Yet the people of the four chief 

 Antillean Islands have no common traits, and exhibit re- 

 markable differences in government and civilization. It 

 is strange to see lands belonging to the same geographic 

 group and equally endowed by nature develop every 

 antithesis of social and industrial life, and to observe the 

 influence of former ownership and present government 

 upon the races which have been transplanted there. In 

 Jamaica, under the beneficent rule of the English govern- 

 ment, the negro is provided with the implements and im- 

 provements of the highest civilization, and imitates in his 

 domestic life the rural customs of Great Britain. In Santo 

 Domingo a free mulatto has developed an entirely differ- 

 ent character. In Haiti, as black in civilization as in the 

 color of its inhabitants, is portrayed the degradation which 

 a savage race may retain, without civilizing influences, al- 

 though centuries have lapsed since it was imported across 

 the sea. In Cuba may be seen a white civilization which 

 has developed in place of a most corrupt and despotic colo- 

 nial administration : while Porto Rico shows how closety a 

 transplanted European people, trained in the political and 

 social conditions of the mother-country, may repeat the 

 social status of the latter. 



