AQ1 A. FE. Verrill—The Bermuda Islands. 79 
part of the bulk. In some sections of the limestone rocks, as many 
as five to seven buried layers of red clay, generally thin, may be 
seen, indicating as many successive periods of surface decomposition, 
each of pretty long duration. 
The mixed soils are the better, and when they contain vegetable 
mould they are often remarkably fertile. 
There is ample evidence that the original virgin soil of Bermuda 
was wonderfully fertile.* Tobacco and corn were the principal crops 
for nearly a hundred years, and both are notoriously exhaustive to 
soils, especially the tobacco, which requires much potash. (See Part 
III, Tobacco.) 
Large amounts of tobacco were exported for 80 years,—sometimes 
as much as 200,000 pounds annually, but we find no record of any 
artificial fertilizers having been used during that time,f and as but 
few cattle were kept, there could have been but little manure used. 
Probably seaweeds were used to some extent, as now. The burning 
of the cedars and brush would have furnished some potash to the 
soil for a time, but not for any long period. There could have been 
but little rotation of crops. Therefore, it is very remarkable that 
any decent crops could have been raised on the same ground during 
all that time, and ever since, in many cases. 
Capt. John Smith, in his General History, ed. of 1629, said that the 
fertility in some places had decayed “and in many places decayeth.” 
There is abundant positive evidence that the soil did become very 
badly exhausted in many places, and the crops depreciated greatly 
in the 18th century. From 1700 to 1840 agriculture was not 
* The Rev. Mr. Hughes, in his letter of 1614, speaks of their raising two crops 
of wheat each year, and adds the following as to the fertility of the soil, ete.:— 
“The earth is very fertile, and so mellow and gentle, as it needeth neither plow- 
ing, nor digging, so that after the wood is taken off, and the grasse and weeds 
bee burnt and destroyed, and the common business of Fortifying bee once ended, 
men shall live heere in much ease, without such moyling and toyling as in 
England, The greatest labour will be worming and pruning of some plants, 
which children may doe as well, and better than men.” 
“T wish that all they that hereafter shal come hither out of England would 
consider with themselves that these lands were never inhabited till now, and 
that therefore they must of necessity labour hard at first, and be contented to 
endure hardnes and some want of many necessaries.” 
By ‘‘ wheat” he probably meant maize, as is plainly indicated in other pas- 
sages of his writings. Real wheat does not flourish in Bermuda. 
+ True artificial fertilizers, in the modern sense, were then unknown, but in 
New England, at that time, it was customary to use fish and fish refuse, as well 
as wood ashes, for fertilizers. 
