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Page 61
But on descending to the plains, where there is less moisture, and where
vegetation therefore is scantier, we find the unwonted forms of growth
more distinct, and have the full sense of being in a southern land. Here
the thorn palms, the cactus hedges, the penguin fences, resembling huge
pineapple plants, and various trees and shrubs, being seen more
isolated, make a stronger impression of the peculiarities of tropical
forms. Here too we meet in greater abundance with the cocoanut tree,
occasionally forming long avenues of lofty palms on the estates. And
here we see more frequently the huge squares of many acres, heavy with
the luxuriant wealth of the cane, and thronged by dusky laborers. The
heat, which in the uplands is pleasant, though rather too steady in the
plains, becomes oppressive and enervating. The distinction between the
wet and dry seasons, also, is much more distinctly marked, and, in
short, everything corresponds more fully with the usual idea of a
tropical land.
The luxuriance and the glory of nature are the same now as ever; but
everywhere over the island the traveller sees the melancholy evidences
of the decay of former wealth. You may travel over miles and miles on
the plains once rich with the cane, or ridge after ridge in the uplands
once covered with the dark-green coffee plantations, which now are
almost a wilderness. To quote the language of another, 'ridges,
overgrown with guava bushes, mark the cornfields; rank vegetation fills
the courtyard, and even bursts through the once hospitable roof. A curse
seems to have fallen upon the land, as if this generation were atoning
for the sins of the past. For while we lament the ruin of the present
proprietors, we cannot forget the unrequited toil which in times gone by
created the wealth they have lost; nor that hapless race, the original
owners of the soil, whose fate darkens the saddest page in history.'
A passing traveller will see little to compensate the sadness occasioned
by old magnificence thus in ruins, strewing the whole island with its
melancholy wrecks. What there is to set off against it, we shall
consider hereafter.
What survives of the agriculture and commerce of Jamaica is still, as
formerly, mainly dependent on the two great staples, sugar and coffee;
the former being raised chiefly in the plains and valleys, the latter in
the uplands and mountains. There was, it is said, an indigenous sugar
cane in the West Indies, when first discovered; but if so, it has long
been supplanted by the Mauritius cane, which is now cultivated. The
joints of the cane, being cut and laid horizontally in furrows, which
are then covered over, spring up in a crop which comes to maturity in
about a year; and when this is cut, the roots rattoon, or send up shoots
for five or six years in succession. This is one reason why Jamaica
sugar planters find it so hard to compete with Cuban production. On the
deep soil of Cuba the cane rattoons, it is said, not five or six, but
forty years in succession.
The coffee plant is a beautiful shrub. Left to itself, it would grow
twenty or thirty feet high; but it is kept down to such a height as that
the berries can easily be picked by the hand. Its glossy, dark-green
leaves resemble a good deal the jessamine; and the resemblance is
increased during the time of flowering, by the beautiful white blossoms,
of a faint, delicate fragrance, which are scattered over the branches
like a light powdering of snow. It thrives well in a moist air; and
coffee plantations may be seen clothing the sides of mountains three,
four, and even five thousand feet above the sea. The history of the way
in which coffee was introduced to the West Indies is really quite a
little romance, though an authentic one. It is well known that Holland
used to practise the most odious commercial monopoly ever known among
Christian nations. Her spice islands were guarded with a cruel jealousy
rivalling the fables of the dragon that guarded the golden apples; and
her great coffee island, Java, was equally locked up from the world. To
give a spice plant or a coffee plant to a stranger, was an offence
inexorably punished with death. A single coffee plant, however, was
allowed to come to Europe as an ornament to the conservatory of a
wealthy Amsterdam burgomaster. This was still more jealously watched
than its fellows in the East Indies; but at length a French visitor
managed to secrete a living berry, and, taking it with him to Paris, to
raise a plant. From this again a young plant was taken to Martinique,
one of the French West Indies. When the young stranger, freighted with
such possibilities of wealth, arrived there, it was found that the
exposure of the voyage had nearly extinguished its vitality. It was
tended with the most anxious care; but for two or three years it
continued to languish, and threatened by an untimely death to give Dutch
selfishness a triumph after all. At last, however, it took a happy
start, and from that plant the whole West Indies have derived their
coffee. It was introduced into Jamaica in 1720, and Temple Hall, one of
the two estates which I have mentioned as being in the beautiful valley
between Kingston and the American Mission, has the honor of showing the
oldest coffee walk in the island.
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