394 TRINIDAD. 



action of natural agents, and not of any mechanical appliance. 

 If the intervention of man had not /or effect to favour the action 

 of those agents, then the ignorant matter-of-fact ploughman would, 

 evidently, be as good a husbandman as the well-informed and 

 skilful economist ; and, of all occupations, agriculture would be 

 the simplest and the easiest. But this is not the case : for agri- 

 culture consists in combining a series of operations, so as to obtain, 

 from a given quantity of land, the largest possible return at the 

 lowest possible cost. I would call planting the mere procedure of 

 replacing by useful vegetables the natural growth of wild plants, 

 the word planter expressing, in this case, pretty exactly the state 

 of agriculture in these colonies. " A youth," says Mr. A. Ander- 

 son (in his Essay on Cane Cultivation), " is taken from a store, and 

 placed on an estate, as an overseer ; and, as soon as he is found 

 to possess intelligence and probity, he is invested with a manage- 

 ment ; or, if he be of mature age, he is inducted, at once, into 

 a management, without undergoing any probation. It takes years 

 of apprenticeship to make a tailor or shoemaker ; but, in Trini- 

 dad, a planter is made in a day." What Mr. Anderson has said 

 of the sugar planter is a fortiori applicable to all others, but par- 

 ticularly to the provision grower. The sugar planter commonly 

 possesses a certain amount of information ; the provision grower 

 is, in the majority of cases, an emancipated slave, or a liberated 

 African. He cuts down the high wood, or copse, at a certain 

 period, clears the land by burning, and then negligently plants 

 the seeds of his corn, in holes made with the point of the cutlass ; 

 or lays his manioc cutting or plantain slip, in openings made by 

 one or more strokes of the hoe : the provision ground is weeded once 

 or twice, and, in time, under God's providence, the crop arrives 

 at maturity. If a good crop be obtained, he is considered skilful ; 

 if not, the fault is that of the weather, or the land. And yet, it is 

 well known that an acre of indifferent soil, properly and carefully 

 cultivated, will yield as much as 15,0001bs. of yams, whilst the 

 same extent of good land, ill planted and managed, will yield 

 perhaps but one half that quantity. Of this, however, the great 

 majority of cultivators are not convinced, because, in their opinion, 

 nature is the sole agent of production ; and unless they have satis- 

 factory proofs that care, skill, and industry can effectually aid and 

 second nature in her operations, they will never devote to the cul- 

 tivation of their properties that attention and perseverance which 

 are the instruments of success. Of what I advance there is a 



