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Bively 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 



