1884.] PLANTING ENTEBPBISE IN THE WEST INDIES. 337 



importance which have no hill lands still available for cultivation ; 

 but with regard to the former, as I have elsewhere remarked, 'the 

 rich character of the soil in Barbados, and the successful results of 

 the high culture it has received,' may be gathered from the fact that, 

 while the Sugar Planter, a paper devoted to the interests of the 

 sugar industry in Australia, gravely discusses the exhaustion of 

 canefields, the Planters' Journal, of Barbados, somewhat facetiously 

 remarks that ' the land of this island, even now, shows no sign of 

 exhaustion, although it was converted into canefields within a 

 measurable distance of Noah's flood.' 



In Dominica, the president, Mr. Eldridge, in the Blue Book Report 

 for 1879, refers to the facilities for obtaining land in that beautiful 

 island, ' unsurpassed in Her Majesty's dominions for fertility/ Large 

 tracts of these lands, in the interior, belong to the Crown, and they 

 can be purchased at an upset price of £1 per acre. Another ofl&cial 

 report states that 'at least one-half the total area of Dominica is 

 available for agricultural purposes, amounting to about 96,000 acres 



. . At the present moment there is not a third of that extent 

 under cultivation.' — (Report on Coffee Cultivation in Dominica.) 



Coming further south, Grenada has a considerable area of mountain 

 land available for cultivation; while at Tobago probably fully two- 

 thirds of its area are still covered by virgin forest. 



Tliis review, necessarily rapid and general, will at least show to what 

 a small extent really the rich and fertile lands of the West Indies 

 have been so far utilized. In British Guiana alone, there is an area of 

 country equal to two Ceylons quite untouched ; in British Honduras 

 we have more than the total area of the Fiji Islands ; to Trinidad we 

 could add the wealth of the Straits Settlements ; and with the resources 

 of the unworked soil of Jamaica we might emulate the prosperity of, 

 at least, four Colonies of the size of Mauritius. 



Next to sugar, rum, and molasses, the most important articles of 

 production in the West Indies are cacao and coffee. Up to within a 

 few years ago, these two articles were almost exclusively produced by 

 Trinidad and Jamaica, each of which had a corresponding number of 

 acres under cultivation, and an equal gross value of exports. Tor 

 instance, in Trinidad, 25,188 acres were returned under cacao, yielding 

 a gross export value of £270,906 ; while, in Jamaica, 22,853 acres 

 were returned (in 1878) under coffee, yielding a gross export value of 

 £271,449. Latterly, however, Grenada has becpme a large cacao- 

 produciog Colony, and it will shortly, no doubt, approach Trinidad in 

 the value and extent of its exports. The success of the cacao industry 

 in this island is very remarkable and suggestive. In a comparative 

 statement, published in the Blue Book Report for 1879, the staple 

 products of Grenada are thus shown : — 



