There Are 200,000 Acres Of Productive Soil On The Islands, Of Which Only A Fifteenth Is Under Cultivation, And Of This Large Area 150,000 Is Said To Be Specially Adapted For Sugar Culture.

Herein is a prospective Utopia, and people are always dreaming of the sugar- growing capacities of the belt of

Rich disintegrated lava which slopes upwards from the sea to the bases of the mountains. Hitherto, sugar growing has been a very disastrous speculation, and few of the planters at present do more than keep their heads above water.

Were labour plentiful and the duties removed, fortunes might be made; for the soil yields on an average about three times as much as that of the State of Louisiana. Two and a half tons to the acre is a common yield, five tons, a frequent one, and instances are known of the slowly matured cane of a high altitude yielding as much as seven tons! The magnificent climate makes it a very easy crop to grow. There is no brief harvest time with its rush, hurry, and frantic demand for labour, nor frost to render necessary the hasty cutting of an immature crop. The same number of hands is kept on all the year round. The planters can plant pretty much when they please, or not plant at all, for two or three years, the only difference in the latter case being that the rattoons which spring up after the cutting of the former crop are smaller in bulk.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 116 of 466
Words from 31672 to 31924 of 127766