CULTIVATION OF SISAL IN THE BAHAMAS 217 



often destroyed. Their usefulness, however, was evidently appreci- 

 ated by a few ; for, as Sir Ambrose Shea, the present governor of the 

 Bahamas, told the writer, he was one day passing the house of a native, 

 when a piece of rope attracted his attention. On inquiring where he 

 obtained it, the negro replied that " it growed in de yard," and showed 

 the governor the plant, and explained the way in which the rope had 

 been made. Now, Sir Ambrose happened to be a native of Newfound- 

 land, and hence knew a good rope when he saw it ; so inquiries were 

 at once made, and the value of the plants was learned. 



The people, however, were slow to realize the importance of the 

 subject, but the governor evinced great energy and enthusiasm in 

 keeping it before them, and when some of the fiber obtained from 

 old plants sold in London at the rate of fifty pounds per ton, and was 

 declared to be superior to that produced in Yucatan, sisal in the Baha- 

 mas had somewhat of a ''boom," and people carefully guarded the 

 very plants that formerly they would have destroyed as weeds. Every- 

 body became enthusiastic, and sisal plantations were everywhere 

 started, not only by the people of the colony, but also by outsiders, 

 as the following facts show. 



A company from St. John's, Newfoundland, has obtained a grant 

 of 18,000 acres of crown land at Abaco; another tract of 20,000 acres 

 on the same island has been allotted to a London company; 2000 

 acres have been taken on Andros by a gentleman from Edinburgh; 

 1200 are in process of cultivation on Inagua; but the largest appli- 

 cation has been lately made by two London companies, who together 

 ask for 200,000 acres. Besides the large plantations mentioned above 

 many small scattered areas go to swell the total. Indeed, there have 

 been so many demands for crown land that the governor has recently 

 advanced the price from one dollar and twenty-five cents to four dol- 

 lars per acre. 



Now as to the character of the land. In Andros, which, as above 

 stated, is the largest of the group, and where most of the writer's time 

 was passed, the land is locally described by one of three terms : it is 

 either "coppet," "pine-yard," or "swash." The coppet, which occu- 

 pies, as a rule, the more elevated parts of the island, is composed of 

 small angiospermous trees, often only two or three inches in diameter, 

 and so close together as to make an almost impassable thicket. Back 

 of the coppet, which is mostly a fringe along the eastern coast, nearly 



