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Mr Simon Sontar has favoured me with the following excellent 

 account of his connexion with the rise of the industry. The 

 knowledge of the capabilities of Jamaica as a competitor of the 

 Vuelta Abajo district in Cuba, is doubtless in great measure due 

 to Mr. Soutar's energy and perseverance : — 



' In 1863 I was in Havana and was struck with the great pros- 

 perity of the tobacco industry and the great influence it had on 

 the commerce and prosperity of that port. In those days Peru 

 with its guano deposits, and Chili with its silver mines were very 

 prosperous, and along with London took the entire crop of the 

 finest cigars made, regardless of price; and while I was there the 

 wharves were lined with cases of the finest cigars being shipped 

 to those markets. On every hand I saw at least one-half of the 

 prosperity of Havana assured from its proximity to the great 

 tobacco district, the Vuelta Abajo. I tried to get some seed then 

 but failed, and what I got a year or two afterwards appear to 

 have been fried as it failed to germinate. 



' At the close of the American war, a Kentuckian, Capt. Field, 

 who had served with the Confederate Army, came to Jamaica and 

 posed as a Kentucky tobacco planter. I started him on " Belle- 

 vue," owned by the late O. M. Feurtado, but then the property of 

 Mr. Derbyshire. 



' Capt. Field got seed from Kentucky and grew tobacco, but it 

 was a long leaf and suitable only for smoking purposes. About 

 1868 or 1869, we got some Havana seed, through Sir J. D. Hooker 

 and the Superintendent of Public Gardens, with which I started 

 cultivation with Capt. Field, at Bellevue and with Pedro Cisreros, 

 a Cuban from Manzanilla at Cherry Garden, now the residence of 

 Major Marescaux. The tobacco grew very well but had no Vuelta 

 Abajo flavour. I next tried the banks of the Rio Cobre at Cross 

 Pen and several other places but without satisfactory results. 

 Meantime I thought the Wag Water Valley both in soil and me- 

 teorological conditions similar to the Vuelta Abajo, and procured 

 a sample of soil which was sent to Pelletier, the celebrated French 

 Chemist for analysis. It was found to be very much like a similar 

 sample already analyzed by the same chemist from the Vega 

 Pilotos, a rather celebrated vega belonging to Partagas & Co. I 

 secured some land at Temple Hall in 1 870, but being late, very 

 little was done that year, and it was not until 1872, when I got 

 Jose Pita, a planter from the Vuelta Abajo, that I was able to 

 produce a tobacco equal to Havana. In that year I got about 

 twenty of the best Havana cigarmakers, revolutionists who came 

 to Jamaica as refugees— Sestero, Badell, Pino and others, all 

 celebrated workers from the factories of Partagas, Cabanas and 

 " La Honradez." They made the cigars exhibited at the Vienna 

 Exhibition in 1873, and which gained the highest Medal and 

 Diploma, and secured orders from Prince Milan, (afterwards King 

 of Servia), the Sultan of Turkey, and a number of other notables 

 who considered them better than the usual run of Havana cigars 

 of that clay. The Commissioner in charge of the Colonial Section 

 of the Vienna Exhibition was Mr. William Robinson (afterwards 



