XIII 
GINGER 
395 
by the rains, the land becomes quite valueless, and Mr. 
Fawcett suggests that it would probably take 100 years 
to recuperate. “ Fertilisation of the soil was rarely 
attempted, partly from the small profit made, and partly 
from local custom. The most that was done was to 
plough in the weeds and throw banana trash on the 
ground. There were no stables in Jamaica, so there was 
no such thing as the compost-heap. Sea-weeds and 
watering the ground with sea-water was tried experi- 
mentally, with good results, but the average planter 
would not take the trouble to cultivate the ground in a 
scientific manner” (Kilmer, in The Land of Ginger). 
“ Dried-up streams, general barrenness, in fact a wilder- 
ness, marks the progress of ginger cultivation.” 
The accounts of the ruin of great tracts of country 
in Jamaica, as given thus by Kilmer and Fawcett, 
apply in equal force to many other of our colonies and 
fco many other of the temporary crops. Such destruc- 
tion and waste are not at all necessary, and are due to 
incompetency of the local governments, and especially 
to that of the land officer, whose duty it is to see that 
the land is cultivated properly, and not permanently 
destroyed in order to add a temporary increase to the 
land-revenue. 
“ Ginger can be and is,” says Fawcett, “ grown in 
many places year after year on the same ground. An 
intelligent cultivator at Borbridge stated that he knew 
of ginger growing for forty years in the same patch,” 
and he mentions an old resident who cultivated ginger 
and arrowroot on the same ground since his youth. It 
is therefore quite unnecessary to destroy forests of great 
value in order to grow a few crops of ginger, in fact it 
is inexcusable. 
It was Sir Henry Blake who strongly urged the 
arrest of the wasteful system of forest destruction, and 
the rational scientific cultivation of the old ground by 
the use of manures. The Jamaica Agricultural Society 
in 1895 commenced experiments in manuring. An 
examination of the exhausted soil revealed the fact 
