THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [Ausust r, 1891. 
slavery days have been allowed to die of neglect 
and forest fires. With an abundance of water- 
head in mountain streams they allow fertile plains 
to dry up and remain sterile for wSnt of irrigation. 
But the Boston Fruit Company, represented by 
their foander and president, Capt. S. D. Baker, 
the banana king (as the natives call him), are 
making things move on the north side, and with 
a progressive governor and pushing earnest chief 
of their botanical department, bid fair to rerolu- 
tionize Jamaica in a few years. 
Most of the soil is stiff red or brown clay and 
but little of it seems suited to- pineapples, while 
but little seems unsuited to bananas. We see them 
growing on the steepest hill-sides, so steep that 
the top of the stalk is nearer the ground 
horizontally than vertically. A large portion of 
the available land was all in sugar cine before 
abolition, but since then, though the slaves were 
all paid for, the planters could not pay running 
expenses, hiring the lazy freed-men; and gradually 
all the estaties were turned into pasture or 
abandoned. The freed-men preferred to strike out 
for themselves and be independent, so they squatted 
here and there and have lived a' lazy, hand-to- 
mdUth existence, such as their forefathers enjoyed 
in Africa ever since. The paternal government 
only interferes with this for the first few years 
of their lives, obliging them to acquire a good 
common school education. These few yearj of 
enforced labor, I presume, are sufficient to reoonciie 
the colored man to a prolonged rest during the 
balance of his life. 
The Boston Fruit Company have acquired some 
20,000 acres of these old sugar estates and are 
gradually reclaiming them for bananas and 
coconuts. They run steamers three 'or four times 
a week to Boston, making the run in five to 
seven days, and have never failed to carry their 
vegetables in better order than ouT*ai'lroads usually 
do. This year, for the first time, they secured 
the services of a market gardener from the North, 
and he has been experimenting with ten acres in 
vegetables as a trial. His tomatoes yielded almost 
as they would at the North, when they were not 
dried or drowned out; and his cucumbers seemed 
to be quite free from insect enemies and yielded 
much better than with us. Mango trees line 
the roads and are as abundant in the woods and 
fields as native forest trees, while coffee and cocoa 
trees form the underbrush everywhere in the 
abandoned estates ; and here and there an enter- 
prising colored family squat and make their 
living gathering and selling the fruit of these 
wild trees, which, however, they never cultivate. 
The all-spice, pimenta offioinalis, ia a native forest 
tree and the logwood, a leguminous tree, is the 
regular second growth timber, which, in time, with 
Uunumvitee and cactus, takes possession of old 
fields A fair quality of tobacco is raised in the 
valleys by Cubans ; Liberian coffee a hardier, 
more prolific and superior variety, is being introduced ; 
also the oolanut of India, whioh is u^ed on 
account of its large amount of caffein to give 
strength to chocolate. Nutmegs and cinnamon 
ars being iried also, but the great crop is bananas. 
From 10,000 to 15,000 bunches per day leave 
Jamaica for the States, three fourths of which are 
either carried or supplied by the Boston Fruit 
Company through the banana king, Capt. Biker. 
The scenery is grand. A midrib of volcanic 
mountains serves as a background for the vie.vs 
■inland on the east end of the island, towering 
to upwards of 7,000 feet. Innumerable ranges 
of foot hills, wooded to their summits, are inter- 
sected by crystal streams, cutting deep gorges through 
their rooky sidoa, all draped with luxuriant tropical 
foliage. Tall tree ferns wave on shaded elopes 
while graceful coconut and royal palms raise 
their majestic heads proudly against the sky on 
mountain tops thousands of feet above the sea, 
whioh rolls " deeply, darkly, baautifully blue" at 
their feet. Tufts of feathery bamboo, like bunches 
of ostrich plumes, wave on every slope and plain, 
tall as the forests treea and indescribably soft and 
graceful; while large silk cotton trees with their 
ponderous, root-butressed trunks and great straggling 
limbs seem to writhe and stagger beneath their 
burden of throttling vines and parasitic orchids. 
Aroids, climbing plants with the leaves of a oaladium 
and stem of a sugar cane, climb to their summits 
and envelope the tree with long, white, rope-like 
roots, half an inch in diameter^ which spring from 
every joint of the stem. When you add to those orchids 
with leaves like bananas, the efforts of the tree at 
foliage seem very insignitioant and secondary. 
' Coolies land Chinese are found occasionally, and 
each one does the work of three negroes, though 
not nearly as large and museular. Some of the 
ootaroons and quadroons' make good foremen and 
under boBSes as w^U as clerks and book keepers. 
The government levies' an ap[jarently indis- 
criminate duty upon all imports, a tar ff for revenue 
only, so far as I could ieara, taxing flour S2 per 
barrel, though they can raise no wheat, but strange 
to aay, entering potatoes free 1 With the revenue 
thus collected splendid macadamized roads are 
kept up, abundance of excellent water supplied 
to every town and village, exosllant nurseries (which 
supply trees at cost) good soho:)ls and effioient 
police force maintained. Enough money is left 
over to pay the Englishmen who exile them elves 
here to fill the higher govarnmant oflicea handsomely 
for their servioes ; and if the bulk of the colored 
population is poor, they are happy; poor beoause 
they are lazy, and happy because they can be lazy. 
Melbourne, Fla, John B Beach 
— Florida Dispatch, 
Cinchona cultivation is rapidly progressing in India 
though unfortunately the tree will not grow with auy 
prospect of commeroial success in any spat north o( 
Lower Bengal, the Peniasula and the Straits Setile- 
meuts. Aa American papar recently gave a graphio 
account of the plautitioua in Java which are running 
the Bolivian industry, and from this it app ars that 
at the age of eight years the tress arj rea'ly to strip, 
or if the owner is hard up, aa is usually the case, 
part of them may be utilised sooner ; and young plants 
put in their places. la some sections it is customary 
to remove from eaoh tree abrnt a quirterot its biirk 
every year, but in others the tree is cut down to the 
ground, its trunk and large limbs aro peeled, aud 
thrf smallest branches carefully scraped clear t) the 
leaves. An eight-year old tree yields from twelve to 
fifteen p lunds of bark. If the peeled-off bark hap- 
lieiis to get wet it loses much of its alkaloid quinine, 
hence every planter has to build ample sheds in 
which t) dry it. There are said to be no fewer 
than tweuty-one varieties of the quina tree, some 
worthless, others ranging in the amount of quinine 
contained in the bark from one half per cent to 
seven per cant. The buyer must know his business, 
for if not an expert he is likely to be badly sold. 
The "gold brick" swindle has not been so often 
perpetrated in the United States as that of selling 
for cinchona bark the worthless hark of some other 
tre9. A well-known dealer ofLiPaz, vvhi ou^ht to 
have known v^hat he was about after ypars of experi- 
ence, recently lost $11-60,000 at one tell swoop on a 
ship load of bark supposed to be cinchona, but whioh, 
when it arrived at the English market, turned out 
t ) be a spfioies of oak good for nothing at all. The 
only way to test the bark is by testing it. That whioh 
gives «ut a de'ter tiste ioimeliately on beins; taken 
into the mouth will yield a comparativelly small 
amount of quinine, while tue best must b3 chewed 
before the quinine tasts is apparent. — Indian Agri . 
cnltttrisi, 
