dt, that an European lately arrived
in the torrid zone is struck with nothing so much as the extreme
smallness of the spots under cultivation round a cabin which
contains a numerous family. The plantains alone ought, according to
Humboldt, to give one hundred and thirty-three times as much food as
the same space of ground sown with wheat, and forty-four times as
much as if it grew potatoes. True, the plantain is by no means as
nourishing as wheat: which reduces the actual difference between
their value per acre to twenty-five to one. But under his plantains
he can grow other vegetables. He has no winter, and therefore some
crop or other is always coming forward. From whence it comes, that,
as I just hinted, his wife and children seem to have always
something to eat in their mouths, if it be only the berries and nuts
which abound in every hedge and wood. Neither dare I guess at the
profit which he might make, and I hope will some day make, out of
his land, if he would cultivate somewhat more for exportation, and
not merely for home consumption. If any one wishes to know more on
this matter, let him consult the catalogue of contributions from
British Guiana to the London Exhibition of 1862; especially the
pages from lix. to lxviii. on the starch-producing plants of the
West Indies.

Beyond the facts which I have given as to the plantain, I have no
statistics of the amount of produce which is usually raised on a
West Indian provision ground. Nor would any be of use; for a glance
shows that the limit of production has not been nearly reached.
Were the fork used instead of the hoe; were the weeds kept down;
were the manure returned to the soil, instead of festering about
everywhere in sun and rain: in a word, were even as much done for
the land as an English labourer does for his garden; still more, if
as much were done for it as for a suburban market-garden, the
produce might be doubled or trebled, and that without exhausting the
soil.

The West Indian peasant can, if he will, carry 'la petite Culture'
to a perfection and a wealth which it has not yet attained even in
China, Japan, and Hindostan, and make every rood of ground not
merely maintain its man, but its civilised man. This, however, will
require a skill and a thoughtfulness which the Negro does not as yet
possess. If he ever had them, he lost them under slavery, from the
brutalising effects of a rough and unscient