VERTEUIL TRINIDAD AGRICULTURE. 
221 
most enlightened peasantry cannot be more than the arms of 
the country, but what will be the arms if the body be without 
its head 1 The fable will tell you. 
May I ask our officials who draw their income from the 
revenue of the colony whether they think that a peasant pro- 
prietary can save Trinidad in the event of a collapse of the large 
sugar and cacao proprietors 1 
CACAO. 
If we follow the condition of the country during the last 
fourteen or fifteen years, we find that the cacao industry has 
doubled its production within that period, and it is to its present 
importance that we are better off than our neighbours. Its rapid 
extension dates from the administration of Sir Arthur Gordon, 
who in 1869 suppressed squatting and threw open the Crown 
lands of the colony. The position of squatters, whose cultiva- 
tion was chiefly cacao in the richest lands of the interior, was 
legalized, and their holdings extended rapidly as roads were 
established. The present district of Montserrat stands out as 
a brilliant result of that wise Governor’s policy. The agglo- 
meration of several small properties formed the splendid planta- 
tions so much admit ed to-day. The former proprietors, a ter 
selling out, betook themselves further in the interior to begin 
afresh and to form the nucleus of future large properties, avoiding 
the approaching civilization. 
In 1869 the lands extending behind the Couva and Pointe-a- 
Pierre sugar estates were in high woods. Twenty-five years 
later the stretch of cacao plantations had extended twe ve ini es 
or more eastward, and formed, as it were, one vast p an a ion 
interrupted merely by the Burnley group of sugar estates, irom 
Caura and the heights of Arouca to Poole and i Wna Grande 
The opening up of a younger district soon fo owe e 8 
from the left bank of the Caroni, and comprising the valleys of 
the Tumpuna, Talparo, Cumuto, Canape and Sangre 
almost uninterrupted cultivation to Tamana on ‘ ^ 
vanilla on the east, and the vegas of the Oropuche to the mo. th 
and north-east. With the opening will have 
Caparo Valley railway extensions, before ™ a > > with an d 
elapsed the stretch of cacao just described will meet with ana 
disappear in the plantations of Montserrat. 
_r island was about 
. In 1869 the estimated cacao crop ot urn ^ on from 
six million lbs., and possibly in it w , j at t p a t time 
Grenada, as the small production of '• Europe. That 
was in great part sent over here for export to Europe 
