A TRIP TO THE TROPICS. 21 



rubber trees are planted to shade the cacao and coffee, which will 

 not endure the full rays of the sun. The Erj'thrina is commonly 

 uf-ed for this purpose ; but it is of no value otherwise. Until the 

 cacao and coffee plants are two feet high they are shaded with 

 mats. They also planted bananas and plantains between their 

 cacao and coffee plants, and had twenty thousand bunches of ban- 

 anas, for which they expected to get twelve thousand dollars, but 

 when these were nearly ready for market floods came and swept 

 some of them away. When the trees were cut down the trunks, 

 some of which were a hundred and fifty feet long, were left to rot, 

 as the}^ would do in two years, but the flood lifted them so that 

 the}' acted as scythes and cut down the bananas. They got rid of 

 the logs, but in an expensive manner. The}' had four varieties of 

 sugar cane from Jamaica, which was planted in the roughest pos- 

 sible manner, — the Caribs made furrows with hoes, in which the 

 canes were laid down, and chopped into lengths of two feet as they 

 sprout onl}' at broken joints ; they were then covered with the hoe 

 about six inches deep. In nine months they grew nine feet high, 

 while in the Hawaiian Islands it would take eighteen months to 

 get that growth ; and the cane was soft and juicy. In Hawaii and 

 Cuba the cane has to be replanted ever}' five years, losing one 

 year, but here it does not. He believed sugar could be produced 

 here at half what it would cost in Cuba ; but they had no machinery, 

 and with the high duty and low price in the United States it would 

 not pay. Suitable machinery would cost eighty thousand dollars. 

 They purchased a large number of pigs, which they fatted on 

 sugar cane. Their greatest want was a skilful propagator to take 

 care of their seeds before and after germinating. The seed of the 

 India rubber tree is very difficult to grow ; only about ten seeds 

 out of three thousand sent by the Guatemalan Government ger- 

 minated. The only way to preserve it over a fortnight is to plant 

 in boxes and water three times a day. He thought an India rubber 

 tree nursery would be a good enterprise. Not anticipating the 

 effect of the sun, they selected the dryest land for planting, and 

 in the dry season it was almost dried up ; so that they Will have to 

 bring water for their bananas and plantains. In Louisiana the 

 planters are giving up cane, and planting rice as more profitable. 

 In Central America the upland rice when sown broadcast grows 

 six feet high, whereas in Louisiana the speaker had never seen it 

 more than eighteen inches or two feet high in the swamps, or fifteen 



