largely exported for the use of the English working classes?  Why should not Trinidad, and other islands, export fruits--preserved fruits especially?  Surely such a trade might be profitable, if only a quarter as much care were taken in the West Indies as is taken in England to improve the varieties by selection and culture; and care taken also not to spoil the preserves, as now, for the English market, by swamping them with sugar or sling.  Can nothing be done in growing the oil-producing seeds with which the Tropics abound, and for which a demand is rising in England, if it be only for use about machinery?  Nothing, too, toward growing drugs for the home market?  Nothing toward using the treasures of gutta-percha which are now wasting in the Balatas?  Above all, can nothing be done to increase the yield of the cacao-farms, and the quality of Trinidad cacao?

For this latter industry, at least, I have hope.  My friend—­if he will allow me to call him so—­Mr. John Law has shown what extraordinary returns may be obtained from improved cacao-growing; at least, so far to his own satisfaction that he is himself trying the experiment.  He calculates {318b} that 200 acres, at a maximum outlay of about 11,000 dollars spread over six years, and diminishing from that time till the end of the tenth year, should give, for fifty years after that, a net income of 6800 dollars; and then ‘the industrious planter may sit down,’ as I heartily hope Mr. Law will do, ‘and enjoy the fruits of his labour.’

Mr. Law is of opinion that, to give such a return, the cacao must be farmed in a very different way from the usual plan; that the trees must not be left shaded, as now, by Bois Immortelles, sixty to eighty feet high, during their whole life.  The trees, he says with reason, impoverish the soil by their roots.  The shade causes excess of moisture, chills, weakens and retards the plants; encourages parasitic moss and insects; and, moreover, is least useful in the very months in which the sun is hottest, viz.  February, March, and April, which are just the months in which the Bois Immortelles shed their leaves.  He believes that the cacao needs no shade after the third year; and that, till then, shade would be amply given by plantains and maize set between the trees, which would, in the very first year, repay the planter some 6500 dollars on his first outlay of some 8000.  It is not for me to give an opinion upon the correctness of his estimates:  but the past history of Trinidad shows so many failures of the cacao crop, that even a practically ignorant man may be excused for guessing that there is something wrong in the old Spanish system; and that with cacao, as with wheat and every other known crop, improved culture means improved produce and steadier profits.

As an advocate of ‘petite culture,’ I heartily hope that such may be the case.  I have hinted in these volumes my belief that exclusive sugar cultivation, on the large scale, has been the bane of the West Indies.