376 CUBA AND PORTO RICO 



a scale of commercial importance. There are no large 

 central factories, the estates are small, and the mills, in 

 most cases, are primitive, a large proportion of them being 

 ancient windmills; but the sugar industry has survived 

 because of the superior care with which the cultivation of 

 the cane is carried on, the exceeding richness of the juice 

 of the cane, and the cheapness of labor. If cane were cul- 

 tivated as carefully in Cuba as it is in Barbados, the former 

 island would be capable of supplying the world with sugar. 

 The whole area of the island is occupied, and of its total 

 acreage of 106,470, every foot is under cultivation, except 

 6470 acres occupied by towns, cliffs, or highways. There 

 are no crown lands, no forests, and the population has 

 probably reached the maximum which the island can sup- 

 port, even in favorable circumstances. 



Nowhere are the resources of nature so closely garnered 

 as here. Not a thing goes to waste ; even when one darky 

 ejects a mouthful of cane-fiber after extracting the juice, 

 his follower on the roadside picks up the mass to save it 

 for fuel ; the negroes brave the billows in boats which no 

 white man could sail, and perform the apparently impos- 

 sible task of catching by thousands the flying-fish an ani- 

 mal which seems especially adapted to avoid man's cunning. 



Barbados has but one other resource besides the sugar 

 industry, and that is the presence of tourists in the winter 

 and the shipping-men who touch there. 



The imports of the island greatly exceed the exports ; in 

 1896 the former amounted to $4,982,208.50, and the latter 

 to $3,603,953,25. Many of the sugar-estates are being 

 carried on under governmental aid. The island is chiefly 

 dependent upon the United States for its food-supplies 

 and mules (from Kentucky) for the estates, and we prac- 

 tically consume the whole of its sugar product. The mili- 

 tary establishment has also been the means of distributing 

 some $237,500 per annum, but as the government intends 

 transferring the troops to St. Lucia, the welfare of the 

 island will be still further reduced. 



