68 



IRRIGATION. 



gation during a portion of the year. This necessity is con- 

 fined almost exclusively to the south side of the island, dis- 

 tricts which sometimes are not visited with rain for three 

 or four months. Spanishtown and Kingston, and their 

 respective suburbs, oftentimes experience these prolonged 

 droughts, and without irrigation all cultivation in their vici- 

 nity is not unfrecjuently entirely suspended for a short period, 

 while in the adjacent parishes, at the same time perhaps, 

 there will be frequent and sometimes excessive rains. In 

 one hour a person may drive from Spanishtown, where 

 everything is parched and perishing, into St. Thomas, in 

 the Vale, where the most luxuriant foliage and abounding 

 rivulets and meadow streams indicate frequent and copious 

 showers. In the dry parishes however, the want of moisture 

 that is not repaired by the heavy dews which are providen- 

 tially sent during the winter season, may be supplied by 

 irrigation at very inconsiderable expense ; for the whole 

 island abounds in water at all times. It is traversed by over 

 two hundred streams, forty of which are from twenty-five to 

 a hundred feet in breadth, and, it deserves to be mentioned, 

 furnish water power sufficient to manufacture everything pro- 

 duced, by the soil, or consumed by the inhabitants. Far less 

 expense than is usually incurred on the same surface in 

 the United States for manure, would irrigate all the dry 

 lands of the island, and enable them to defy the most pro- 

 tracted droughts with which it is ever visited. 



