24 TlMEHRi. 
though cotton was the chief, it was not the only obje6l 
of cultivation. Coffee was still largely grown, especially 
in Berbice, which produced berries of exceptional and 
famous merit. Another feature deserving of notice in 
the agriculture of these days is that very much more 
attention than has since been the case was given to the 
cultivation of miscellaneous produce, such as the infinite 
variety of tropical fruits and vegetables, for the use and en- 
joyment of the planters ; in this, as in so many other ways, 
the colonists of those days a6ted in accordance with their 
intention to make homes for themselves in Guiana. 
Once more I shall make use of PlNCKARD, as an eye- 
witness of the state of the plantations in those days. 
Of the coast-land, he writes, ' the whole of the land is 
one wide-extended plain, thickly covered with cotton- 
bushes, and everywhere intersected with ditches and 
canals like the low territory of Holland.' The following 
is a picture of a particular cotton estate then in process 
of formation just within the mouth of the Berbice river :— 
The house is a compact dwelling, neatly built of plain wood, offering 
in its exterior nothing to attracl the stranger's eye, nor to bespeak 
the luxury within. It stands on the border of the sea, open to the wide 
ocean. Before it is an extensive and flat beach of firm sand, forming a 
pleasant ride or walk at the side of the water. The estate is quite in its 
infancy, being recently formed out of the rude forest, and indeed only 
now breaking into cultivation. In great part of it the young plants of 
cotton are just shooting from the soil between the remaining stumps of 
trees lately destroyed .... We had a pleasant ride about a mile and a 
half through fields of cotton and of plantains, the negroes running at 
the horses' sides, according to the custom of the country, as fast as we 
chose to ride. 
Another extract, describing a different scene on one 
of these cotton estates, may be given : — 
In the evening we were conduced to the logie to see the slaves 
