XIII 



GINGER 395 



by the rains, the land becomes quite valueless, and Mr. 

 Fawcett suggests that it would probably take 100 years 

 to recuperate. " Fertilisation of the soil was rarely 

 attempted, partly from the small profit made, and partly 

 from local custom. The most that was done was to 

 plough in the weeds and throw banana trash on the 

 ground. There were no stables in Jamaica, so there was 

 no such thing as the compost-heap. Sea-weeds and 

 watering the ground with sea-water was tried experi- 

 mentally, with good results, but the average planter 

 would not take the trouble to cultivate the ground in a 

 scientific manner" (Kilmer, in The Land of Ginger). 

 " Dried-up streams, general barrenness, in fact a wilder- 

 ness, marks the progress of ginger cultivation." 



The accounts of the ruin of great tracts of country 

 in Jamaica, as given thus by Kilmer and Fawcett, 

 apply in equal force to many other of our colonies and 

 to many other of the temporary crops. Such destruc- 

 tion and waste are not at all necessary, and are due to 

 incompetency of the local governments, and especially 

 to that of the land officer, whose duty it is to see that 

 the land is cultivated properly, and not permanently 

 destroyed in order to add a temporary increase to the 

 land-revenue. 



" Ginger can be and is," says Fawcett, " grown in 

 many places year after year on the same ground. An 

 intelligent cultivator at Borbridge stated that he knew 

 of ginger growing for forty years in the same patch," 

 and he mentions an old resident who cultivated ginger 

 and arrowroot on the same ground since his youth. It 

 is therefore quite unnecessary to destroy forests of great 

 value in order to grow a few crops of ginger, in fact it 

 is inexcusable. 



It was Sir Henry Blake who strongly urged the 

 arrest of the wasteful system of forest destruction, and 

 the rational scientific cultivation of the old ground by 

 the use of manures. The Jamaica Agricultural Society 

 in 1895 commenced experiments in manuring. An 

 examination of the exhausted soil revealed the fact 



