18S4.] PLANTING ENTEBPBISE IN THE WEST INDIES. 339 



"bananas (which bear during the first fifteen or eighteen raonths after 

 planting) are more than sufficient to cover the whole cost of planting 

 the cacao. In other words, owing to the development of the fruit 

 trade in Jamaica, a cacao estate can be successfully established, and 

 its working expenses entirely cleared, by the profits on the sale of 

 bananas. Planters, seeing this, are utilizing their banana plants as 

 nurses for the cacao plants, and hence, when the bananas cease to 

 bear, the cacao plants will remain as a permanent cultivation and a 

 source of continued wealth to the proprietor. As mentioned, lately, 

 in my official report. ' where bananas obtain good prices, as in 

 Jamaica, it is no exaggeration to say that a cacao estate can be estab- 

 lished there under more favourable conditions than in any other 

 British possession.'* 



One of the most simple, but by no means the least profitable, of our 

 West Indian industries, is that of coco-nuts, which to distinguish 

 from cacao, cocos, and coca, are generally known in commerce as 

 * koker-nuts.' The finest nuts in the West Indies, and probably in 

 the world, are grown on the coast of Central America ; and British 

 Honduras, in this respect, should become one of the largest and most 

 prosperous producers of coco-nuts. Wherever there is a low, rich 

 coast-line, not too much exposed to hurricanes or strong winds, and 

 where there are regular and cheap shipping facilities, coco -nuts offer 

 very advantageous means for supplementing the resources of the 

 planter ; and I know of no country where such high prices, and 

 where such a regular demand exists for green nuts as the "West Indies. 

 Latterly as much as £6 per thousand was paid in British 

 Honduras for coco-nuts, and very few could be had at that price. 

 The general price for coco-nuts in the West Indies varies from 50s. to 

 SOs. per thousand ; at present they are about 70s. 



It has often occurred to me that if, in the palmy days of sugar- 

 planting in the West Indies, an effort had been made to cover the 

 apparently barren coast lands with groves of coco-nuts, the abandoned 

 estates, now so desolate, would have been mines of wealth to their 

 proprietors, richer and more permanent than anything derived from 

 sugar. 



A coco-nut plantation in the West Indies, w^ell established and in 

 full bearing (say at the end of eight years), with sixty trees to the 

 acre, may be safely assumed to be of the annual value of £10 per 

 acre. The expenses of maintaining a coco-nut plantation, when once 

 established, is practically nothing ; hence the thousands of acres of 



* For those who require a more detailed account of cacao cultivation in Jamaica 

 see, 'Cacao, How to Grew anl How to Give il.' London: S. W. Silver & Co., 67, 

 Comhill. 



