120 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
[Ausust r, 1891. 
slavery days have been allowed to die of nejileot 
and forest fires. With an abundanoo of water- 
head in mountain streams they allow fertile plains 
to dry up and remain sterile for want of irrigation. 
But the Boston Fruit Company, represented by 
their fomder and president, Capt. S. D. Baker, 
the banana king (as the natives oall him), are 
making things move on the north side, and with 
a progressivo governor and pushing earnest chief 
of their botanioal department, bid fair to rovolu- 
tionizoJamaioain a tow years. 
Most of the soil is stiff rad or brown clay and 
but little of it seems suited to pineapples, while 
but little seems unauited to bananas. Wo see them 
growing on the steopeat hill-sides, so stoop that 
the top of the stalk is nearer the ground 
horizontally than vortioally. A largo portion of 
the available land was all in sugar oine before 
abolition, but since then, though the slaves were 
all paid lor, the planters oould not pay running 
expenses, hiring the lazy f reed-men; and gradually 
all the estates were turned into pasture or 
abandoned. The Ireed-meu preferred to strike out 
for themselves and bo independent, so they squatted 
here and there and have lived a lazy, hand-to- 
mouth existenoe, such as their forefathers enjoyed 
in Africa ever sinoo. 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 year.) of 
enforced labor, I presume, are sufficient to reconoilo 
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 eugar 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 our railroads usually 
do. This year, for the first time, they secured 
the services of a market gardener from the North, 
and ha has been experimenting with ten acres in 
vegetables as a trial. His tomatoes yisldod almost 
as they would at the North, whan they wore not 
dried or drowned out; and his ououmbers seemed 
to be quite free from inseot 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 onfle» and cocoa 
trees form the underbrush everywhere in the 
abandoned estates ; and hero 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 oultivato. 
The all-epioe, pimtnta nficinalit, is a native forest 
tree and the logwood, a leguminous tree, is tho 
regular second growth timber, whioh, in time, with 
lignuinvitee and cactus, takes possession of old 
ftolds. 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, which is used on 
account of its large amount of oaffein to give 
strength to chocolate. Nutmegs and oinuamon 
ara being tried also, but the groat crop is bananas. 
From 10,000 to 15,000 bunches per day leave 
Jamaica for the States, three fourths of whioh are 
either carried or supplied by the Boston Fruit 
Company through the banana king, Capt. Baker. 
The Boenery is grand. A midrib of voloamo 
mountains serves as a background for the vie. vs 
inland on the east end of tho island, towering 
to upwards of 7,000 feet. Innumerable ranges 
of foot hills, wooded to their summits, ace inter- 
Beotedby orysUl BtreamH, cutting dnepRorgos through 
their rooky flidei, all draped with luxuriant tropical 
foliage. Tall tree ferns wave on sUftded slopes 
while graceful coconut and royal palms raise 
their majestic heads proudly against tho sky on 
mountain tops thousands of feet above the sea, 
whioh rolls “deeply, darkly, bsautifully blue" at 
their feet. Tufts of feathery bamboo, like bunches 
of ostrich plumes, wave on every slope and plain, 
tall as the forests trees and indescribably soft and 
graceful; while large silk cotton trees with their 
ponderous, rooc-butrcEsed trunks and gre.at straggling 
limbs seem to writhe and stagger beneath their 
burden of throttling vines and parasitio orohids. 
Aroids, climbing plants with the leaves of aoaladiura 
and stem of a sugar cane, olimb to their summits 
and envelope the tree with long, white, rope-like 
roots, bait an inch in diameter, which spring from 
every joint of the stem. When you add to those orohids 
with loaves like bananas, the efforts of the tree at 
foliage seem very insignificant and bocondary. 
Coolies aod Chinese are found ooGasionally, and 
each one does the work of three negroes, tbongh 
not nearly as large and muscular. Some of the 
ootaroons and quadroons make good foremen and 
under bosses as well as clerks and book keepers. 
The government levies an apparently indis- 
criminate duty upon all irnporto, a tar ff for revenne 
only, so far as 1 oouM learn, taxing flour 9'2 per 
barrel, though they can raise no wheat, but strange 
to say, entering potatoea free! With the revenue 
thus oolleotod splendid macadamized ro.ads ara 
kept up, abundanoo of excellent water ouppliod 
to every town and village, exooliont uursories (whioh 
supply trees at cost) good seho da an 1 ellioieiit 
police force maintained . Enough money is left 
over to pay the Engliulimen who exile them tolves 
hero to fill theUighor govornmsnt offices handsomely 
for their earvioes; and if the bulk of tho colored 
population is poor, they ara happy; poor because 
they lazy, and happy because they can be lazy. 
Melbourne, Flu. John B Bsacu 
— Florida Ditpatch. 
Cinchona cultivation is rapidly urogresaiiig in India 
though uofortunatoly the tree will not grow with any 
prospect of commercial success in auy spot north of 
Lover Bengal, tho Peninsula and the Straits Set la- 
ments. An Aniorioau papsr recently gave a gniphio 
acooiint of the plantations in Java whioh are running 
the Bolivian industry, and from this it app are that 
at the age of eight years the tress are ready tu strip, 
or if tho owner is hard up, iis is nsually tlie case, 
part of them may be utilise.l sooner ; and youug pU .ts 
put in thoir places. In some sections it is onstum irr 
to remove from each tree ah uit a qiirrlerof its berk 
every year, but in others tho tree is cut down to the 
ground, iiB trunk and large limbs are peeled, and 
the smallest branches oarolully scraped cl-ar t. tho 
leaves. An eight-year old tree yields from twelve to 
fifteen p unds of bark. If tlio peeled-off birk hap- 
]) 0 n 8 to get wet it loses much of its slkaioi I quinine, 
hence every planter has to build ample sheds in 
whioh ti dry it. There are said tu bo no fewer 
th.m twenty-one varieties of tlie qniua tree, some 
worthloos, others ranging iu the amount of quinine 
contained iti the bark from one iialf per cent to 
seven per cent. Tho Imyer roust knuw his bnsine-is. 
for if not an expert he i» likely to bo badly sold. 
Tlie '* golil brick" awinile lias not lieen so often 
perpetrated in tlia United .States as tint of solitrig 
for cinchona bark tho worthless bark of some other 
tro-*. A well known dealer ul LiPai, lift) ought to 
have known whst ho w.is abunt after y ara of experi- 
ence, recently lost §160,000 at one tell aw lop on a 
ship load of bark suppuHp.I to bo cinch .na, but whioh, 
when it arrived at the English market, tnrnod out 
ti be a species of oak good lor nothing at all. Tim 
only way to test the bark is by testing it. Tliat which 
gives nut a be'tor tisto iumieliatcly on being taken 
intu tbe mouth wi I yield a comparativelly small' 
amount of quuiino, while the best must bs chewed 
before tbe qniuiue taati is apparent.— JnrZmn Agri . 
cnltui'iat. 
