1903 
THE RURAL NEW-YORkER 
8o3 
QUESTIONS ABOUT CUBA. 
Is If Suitable for Small Farmers ? 
It Is difficult to obtain accurate Information about Cuba. 
We have received questions like those printed below from 
several people. They were referred to one of our readers, 
a market gardener at Havana, who answers them: 
Do you know much about your location as com¬ 
pared with others, particularly southwest from you, 
in the vicinity of San Cristobal? 
My location, near Havana, is to my mind the best 
in Cuba for my business. My wagons can deliver 
vegetables or milk in the city in less than two hours, 
or can deliver vegetables or fruit to be shipped to the 
United States on wharf, in the same time. Last 
Winter the teams often made two trips loaded with 
crates of vegetables before noon. I know of the lands 
near San Cristobal only by hearsay. I understand 
that the land is much more sandy than in most other 
parts of the island; in some respects this would be 
an advantage, in others not as compared with land 
near Havana or some shipping port, the farmer will 
always be handicapped by the railroad freights, 
which thus far have been very heavy. I believe one 
would better pay much more for land near his ship¬ 
ping point than buy cheap land far away and be at 
the mercy of a railroad. 
What is your soil especially adapted to raising? 
I have aot yet found out. Most of the farms in 
this section are devoted to pineapples. About three- 
quarters of a million crates, averaging 30 pines to 
the crate, were shipped from here this year. I have 
grown fine strawberries, eggplant, tomatoes, peas, 
Lima beans, cabbage, cauliflower, asparagus, beets, 
radish and pepper. I have failed to grow good lettuce, 
cucumbers, muskmelons, watermelons, string beans 
and sweet corn, but I have not given up trying. Of 
native plants I suppose pineapples, bananas and 
oranges would be generally considered best adapted 
for this soil. Tobacco grows well, but does not bring 
so high a price as that grown in the Vu- 
elto Abajo district lying about 20 miles 
southwest of Havana, 
How long have you lived at Marianao, 
and what have you found the most profit¬ 
able product? 
Two years, but I have been in Cuba now 
five years. My most profitable crop last 
year was strawberries, of which I was the 
only grower near Havana, if not on the 
Island. I had the market to myself for 
four months, but do not look for any such 
luck again. Next to strawberries I did 
best in shipping eggplant to New York. 
By giving the closest attention to the 
handling of this fruit I got the highest 
prices, and often 50 cents a crate above 
the quoted rates. My success with this 
crop was also due to my being on high 
land; all growers who were on low ground 
lost their crops by unusual rains. 
Would you advise growing fruits and 
vegetables, or walnuts, cocoanuts, etc. 
I should advise you to do the thing you 
know best how to do. I expect to end my 
days in an orange grove I am now work¬ 
ing for, and I believe no one can do bet¬ 
ter. If you have the capital, you can con¬ 
tract with reliable parties to set out your grove and 
look after its pruning and training while growing. 
Between the trees in this grove you can set out pine¬ 
apples and with very little care or risk you can grow 
a crop which you can sell in the field at a very good 
profit. These pineapples will bear well for five years; 
at the end of this time your orange trees will be in 
bearing and require all the land. This plan has the 
least possibility of failure and the largest safe re¬ 
turns. Two hundred dollars per acre should cover 
expenses the first year, and a large portion of this 
would come back the second year, with an increasing 
income assured. 
Will crops grow the year round? 
riome crops can be grown every month of the year; 
fodder corn for instance is always in season, but very 
few vegetables will grow during the months of June, 
July, August, September and October. 
Is the climate objectionable at any time of the 
year? 
No, on the contrary the climate is ideal. In Winter 
we have six months of “Indian Summer” weather, 
and during the Summer months the trade winds, 
which blow steadily, make the climaie much plfcas- 
anter than many Northern States in which I have 
lived. 
What do you do for labor? Is it hard to obtain, 
and is native labor as a class, indolent, incompetent 
a.nd untrustworthy? 
I have had no difficulty in hiring good labor. There 
are shiftless, good-for-nothing Cubans, just as there 
are the same kind of people all over the world, even 
in the United Sitates, but I have always been able to 
pick up all I needed of active, steady workers, and 
am now better served than I have ever been in the 
United States. 
Do the owners of transportation and shipping lines 
show an earnest desire to meet the demands and 
needs of the growers of fruit? 
I think the railroad and steamship men are about 
the same here as in the United Scates, perhaps more 
so. They have improved somewhat during the last 
two years, and an enlightened self interest may lead 
them to do still better, but probably they will con¬ 
tinue as heretofore to extract the last cent possible 
from the man who is so unwise as to put himself in 
their power. 
What is land worth in your "vicinity? 
Nothing in my immediate vicinity can he bought at 
any reasonable figure; it is all being sold in town 
lots, but many farms of 30 to 100 acres are for sale 
within 15 miles of Havana at prices varying from $50 
to $100 per acre, price depending on location, build¬ 
ings, etc. One of the great difficulties all Americans 
have had in settling here has been the difficulty of 
purchasing small tracts of land such as you want, 
for none of the original owners were willing to cut up 
their estates and sell in small quantities. An Ameri¬ 
can company has rec'ently hem formed which owns 
over 60,000 acres in our tract. They have had it laid 
out as the United States Government does its public 
lands in whole, half and quarter sections. They have 
also laid out a town site on the railroad, and promise 
to make it a thoroughly American settlement. 
HOWABD EGLESTON. 
RIPENED TREES; ROOTS IN UNCULTI¬ 
VATED ORCHARDS. 
As to the frost ripening your nursery stock, you 
must have a pretty straight nurseryman, or he 
would strip the leaves off, and let you think Nature 
had done it, or tell you it didn’t harm the trees any. 
•RHODODENDRON,. CATAWEIENSE. Fig. 302. 
See Ruralisms, Page 806. 
This is one of the tricks of the trade. It is one 
reason why I do not plant, trees in the Falj. My 
general plan is to have my trees dug very late and 
sent just before ground freezes, and heel them ia my¬ 
self. I then kn.ow the wood is ripe^ and also know 
they are not wintered in a 'cellar. I am ge'fng 
cranky on nursery stock; so much is sold that is not 
right. 1 will not have trees that have been fumigated; 
I have good cause to think trees are sometimes in¬ 
jured by it. I prefer to fight the scale m my own way 
rather than run the risk of fumigation. I have al¬ 
ways believed in cultivation of trees up to about 
a certain time in the Fall, but I saw something re¬ 
cently which has caused me to scratch my head a 
good deal, and it kept my brain pretty busy. 
I have a block of plum trees five years old, part 
of which have not been cultivated at all for two years. 
The heavy blow in September upset a number of 
them. I planted posts and wired the trees to them. 
In filling up one of the post holes I went to the 
middle of the row for a shovelful of dirt, I found 
a perfect network of fibrous roots within an inch 
or two of the surface. I was astonished to find such 
a mass of feeding roots so far from the tree and so 
near the surface. What were they there for? Did 
Naure grow them there just for fun, or to benefit the 
tree? Would it not injure the tree to cut them off 
by cultivation? These and similar questions are like 
Banquo’s ghost, they will not down; they must be 
answered. I shall watch developments very close. I 
do not think I am likely to become a convert to the 
Hitchings method. I know that with me trees must 
be cultivated to get thrift and size, that is, cultivated 
up to a certain time. I am not going to cultivate 
those plum trees any more; I am going to find out 
if Nature i*j so foolish as to grow such a lot of roots 
for nothing, or whether I am foolish for persistently 
cutting them off when they would be a benefit to the 
tree. It may be injury to the tree by the destruction 
of a lot of those roots would be over-balanced by the 
good done to what was left by cultivation. I shall 
not rest until I reach a conclusion. I must not for¬ 
get that those trees were large and very thrifty (made 
so by cultivation) before they grew those feeders out 
in the middle of the row. w. ii. skiixman. 
New Jersey. 
R. N.-Y.—We are glad to know that Mr. Skillman 
will not cultivate those plum trees. Let him feed 
them as usual ^^d cut the grass and weeds, leaving 
everything on the ground for mulching, and then 
see what follows. 
UNCLE SAM PAYS HIS BILLS. 
Facts About the Halifax Award. 
Just after the decision of the commission appointed to 
arbitrate the Alaskan Boundary dispute various papers 
made the assertion that the United States Government 
has never paid what is known as the Halifax award. 
The R. n.-Y. wrote Secretary John Hay about this, and 
received the following letter: 
The Commission sitting at Halifax in 1877, appoint¬ 
ed under Articles XXII. and XXIII. of the treaty 
signed May 8, 1871, between the United States and 
Great Britain, made an award on the 23d day of No¬ 
vember. 1877, in the sum of $5,500,000 in favor of 
Great Britain. This award was signed by two of the 
three commi.si3ionens, Mr. Delfosse and Sir Alexander 
Galt, Mr. Kellogg, the United States Commissioner, 
dissenting from it on two grounds: (1) That the 
advantages accruing to Great Britain under the treaty 
were greater than those accruing to the United States, 
and (2) That it was questionable whether the Trib¬ 
unal was competent to make an award, except with 
the unanimous consent of its members. 
By the terms of the treaty under which 
the award was made, the same was payable 
to Great Britain on or about November 23 
1878. 
On the 21st of November, 1878, Mr. 
Welsh, the minister of the United States 
at London, acting under instructions from 
the President of the United States, deliv¬ 
ered to the Britiish Government a draft for 
$5,500,000 gold coin, the amount of the 
award. In so doing he stated, “that by 
direction of the President, the payment was 
made on the ground that the Government 
of the United States desired to place the 
maintenance of good faith in treaties, and 
the security and value of arbitration be¬ 
tween nations, above all question in its 
relations with the British Government as 
with all other governments. Under this 
motive the Government of the United 
States had, he said, decided to separate the 
question of withholding payment from that 
of its obligation to pay. The Government 
of the United States could not accept the 
result of the Halifax commission as fur¬ 
nishing anyjust measureof the value of the 
participation by its citizens in the inshore 
fisheries of the British provinces, and it protested 
against the actual payment of the award being con¬ 
sidered as in any sense an acquiescence in such meas¬ 
ure or as warranting any inference to that effect.” 
The Department has on file in its archives, the 
British Government’s acknowledgment of the receipt 
of the above mentioned sum. The Department does 
not know of any awards made against this Govern¬ 
ment that have not been paid. By reference to 
Moore's International Arbitration, Vol. 1, pp. 703- 
754, you will find a full history of the work of the 
Halifax Commission. ekA-xcis b. loomis, 
Acting Secretary. 
PERSIMMONS.—Who knows in regard to the bloom 
and fertilization of this fruit? I have heard all sorts of 
stories, but have never examined for myself. I have 
heard that some trees were only male in bloom; that 
some had a perfect bloom; that some were self sterile 
and rieeded pollen from another tree; that some were 
entirely without bloom of any kind. Who knows? I 
that there is more variation in stamen and 
pistil than in most fruits. 'The Callaway was sent me a 
few years ago as a seedless persimmon; indeed, in the 
pint or so of the fruit sent there were fully half with 
no seed, while the other half had from one to two seeds. 
But planted here by the side of other kinds It is just as 
pedy as the average; evidently foreign pollen had its 
influence he^. But I have one from Kentucky that is 
^ 3- half-dozen different kinds 
within fertilizing distance not a single seed has been 
found this year. In other years I have noticed as many 
largest fruits, with none in the 
smaller half. This variety ranges in size from quite 
small to medium, varying more in this respect than any 
^ ^he consistency of stiff 
pple butter and does not “go flat” on falling from the 
tree a pretty fair tasting little persimmon but not a 
bearer. Evidently this variety is not to be fer- 
other kind to any great extent, 
will average as many as six to 
eight seeds to the fruit. These are the backbone of the 
fruit that keep it from mashing, yet we do not want 
them; we want in place firmness of flesh. 
Illinois. BENJ. BUCKMAN. 
