CHAPTER VII. 



Physical resources of Jamaica — Soil — Fruits — Vegetables — Drugs 

 — Trees — Irrigation — Rivers — -Difficulties of transportation- 

 Harbors — Mines. 



Jamaica embraces about 4,000,000 acres of land, of 

 which there are not, probably, any ten lying adjacent to 

 each other, which are not susceptible of the highest cultiva- 

 tion, while not more than 500,000 acres have ever been 

 reclaimed, or even appropriated. 



The .quality and productiveness of the soil may be in- 

 ferred in part, from what I have said of its exports. Sugar 

 retoons here, on most plantations, three or four times. I 

 myself picked some cotton of a superior quality, which had 

 been planted more than ten years. Very little of the soil 

 has been manured, or requires to be, and such a thing as 

 an exhausted estate is hardly known. The negroes some- 

 times exhaust the three or four acres of which they may 

 have become proprietors, by covering the ground with every 

 variety of fruit and vegetable, and by planting anew, after 

 every crop, without giving the soil either rest or restoratives. 

 But these exceptions are of trifling importance. Vegetation 



