PROBLEMS OF REFORESTATION. 



45 



dragged to their destination, are worked up upon the sugar planta- 

 tions or in the cities into the objects for which they were hewn. 



Capt. A. C. Hansard, an intelligent English ex-army officer, who is 

 cultivating coffee in the eastern end of the island, says there are con- 

 siderable areas of forest land on the Luquillo Mountains in his vicinity, 

 but it is almost impossible to get the timber down to the sea. The 

 reason of this is apparent to one who attempts the ascent of these 

 mountains. The coffee cultivation and deforestation has proceeded up 

 to about 2,000 feet, but even to this altitude there are no highways or 

 even decent trails. The latter are so bad that one wonders how the 

 natives manage to get the coffee down to the coast in 100-pound sacks 

 packed upon the backs of men or sure-footed ponies. The trails are 

 soggy paths of slippery and sticky red clay, winding and bending with 

 the drainage. There are no cliffs over which logs can be hurled, as in 

 the high sierras of Mexico, but they must be slowly pulled and dragged 



Fig. 9.— Trees planted to shade military 



by hand, the benefit of gravity being largely offset by the short turns 

 and bends. Nevertheless, logs are occasionally taken down from these 

 hills. Between Carolina and La Salta the writer saw ten or twelve 

 logs which had been cnt in the Luquillo range; they were lying by the 

 roadside awaiting propitious weather for farther removal. A gentle- 

 man stated that they had been in transit from the mountain summit 

 a few feet a day for several months, and they were still 7 or 8 miles 

 from the coast country. They had been dragged by oxen where 

 possible and elsewhere rolled and pulled by manual labor. (See tig. 8.) 



PROBLEMS OF REFORESTATION. 



Porto Eico presents an interesting field for the practice of economic 

 forestry. The climate, geologic structure, and soils are all well adapted 

 to the growth of trees, and the forest question upon this island, plainly 



