THE ALADAMA OPPORTUNITY. 53 



planted as an experiment in sugar cane growing. The exper- 

 iment has been fairly satisfactory, but it does not match up 

 with its red and green rivals. A modern steam evaporating plant 

 of syrup making machmery has just been installed. 



The cane yield is rich and fine. They have some negroes 

 gathering the crop who were brought to Alabama from the 

 sugarcane plantations of Louisiana, and who say that this 

 upland cane is as good as the cane fields of Louisiana show. 



A private saw mill has been established and is' operated by 

 Dr. Foley. The saw mill is private in that there is no market 

 for its output except in the colony, which its owner has es- 

 tablished. The product of the mill is used on the model farm 

 or by the immigrants in the erection of their new, but modest 

 houses. 



The predominant feature about the model farm, the thing 

 that most impresses the observant visitor, is the big cassava 

 field. On first glance it looks an old field filled with sas'safras 

 bushes from three to six feet high. A closer look shows that the 

 vegetation could not be sassafras bushes because the ground 

 has' evidently been cultivated for some purpose, and the second 

 second look shows too that the bushes have been carefully 

 planted in check rows equally distant, even as a peach orchard 

 would be planted. 



The cassava bushes are still wearing abovit half of the leaves 

 of their summer vegetation although the leaves which remain 

 show in their red and yellow covering the evidence of some 

 cold wind, and the trace of nipping frost that has fallen once 

 in Baldwin County. 



RICHNESS IN THE ROOTS. 



In the cassava field that which is above ground is of little 

 value. In fact except those bushes whose stems are cut up an 1 

 banked like sugar cane for seed for the next crop, all that part 

 of the cassava field which is above the ground is worth noth- 

 ing to the grower. The richness of the cas'sava bush is its 

 roots beneath the gfound. 



The cassava plant in its way is both like the corn and the 



sugarcane plant and it is cultivated in much the same way 



these plants are raised. Cassava is planted in check rows from 



, four to six feet apart. The plant when it is allowed to mature 



