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sively accumulate. It is not so in the fields 

 covered with indigo, or other herbaceous plants ; 

 where the rays of the Sun penetrate freely into 

 the earth, and by the accelerated combustion of 

 the hydrurets of carbon, and other ' acidifiable 

 principles, destroy the germes of fecundity. 

 These effects strike the imagination of the plan- 

 ters the more forcibly, as in lands newly inha- 

 bited they compare the fertility of a soil, which 

 has been abandoned to itself during thousands 

 of years, with the produce of ploughed fields. 

 The Spanish colonies on the continent, and the 

 great islands of Porto-Rico and Cuba, possess 

 remarkable advantages with respect to the pro- 

 duce of agriculture over the Little West India 

 islands. The former, from their extent, the 

 variety of their scenery, and their small relative 

 population, still bear all the characters of a new 

 soil ; while at Barbadoes, Tobago, St. Lucia, 

 the Virgin Islands, and the French part of St. 

 Domingo, it may be perceived, that long culti- 

 vation has begun to exhaust the soil. If in the 

 valleys of Aragua, instead of abandoning the in- 

 digo grounds, and leaving them fallow, they 

 were covered during several years, not with corn, 

 but with other alimentary plants and forage ; if 

 among these plants such as belong to different 

 families were preferred, and which shade the 

 soil by their large leaves ; the melioration of the 

 fields would be gradually accomplished, and 



