220 TiMEHRI. 



of supply and demand, and when, as often happened 

 during the winter months, four or five and even more 

 schooners happened to be in port together, the demand 

 exceeded considerably the supply and prices v^ould rise to 

 6/ and even 8/ a bunch. During such periods the crowds 

 of country people streaming down to the seaports 

 throughout the day and night, chatting, laughing, or 

 quarrelling, turned the hitherto dreamy langour of 

 these almost dead seaport towns into bustling excite- 

 ment and busy a6livity, and money thus easily got 

 freely went, until the large landed proprietors and semi- 

 abandoned sugar estate owners began to think that 

 the planting of bananas, if beneath their dignity, 

 from its large return justified the condescension, and 

 a paying banana walk was secretly if not openly 

 preferred to a bankrupt sugar estate. At any rate 

 a few fields of bananas if planted along with the cane, 

 " merely as an experiment of course" could not be 

 regarded as a change of allegiance from King Sugar, and 

 the ready cash sales and large profits of banana planting 

 have in every instance proved so alluring and power- 

 ful that one by one every sugar estate, even in the 

 fertile and seasonable parish of St. Thomas, from Morant 

 to St. Ann's Bay, along nearly three-fourths of the coast 

 line of the Island, has passed entirely into banana culti- 

 vation, making their proprietors the envy of the less 

 fortunate amongst the community, whilst the unfortu- 

 nate proprietors of sugar estates in other distri6ls re- 

 ceive a corresponding sympathy. 



The present condition of the industry is much like 

 most other agricultural undertakings pursued on a large 

 scale under varying conditions of climate, soil and 



