tle trouble attending its growth,
and the manufacturing it for food.

The sugar-cane grows very strong, and I think will come to
perfection; although it suffers much from the blighting winds,
and the grub-worm. Vines, orange, and lemon trees, are in a very
thriving state: the banana trees found growing on the island,
will, I make no doubt, thrive very well, when those which have
been planted out from the old trees come to perfection; indeed
some of them have already yielded good fruit. That useful article
of food, the potatoe, thrives amazingly, and two crops a year may
be obtained with ease: I have seen 120 potatoes at one root, 80
of which were larger than an hen's egg. Every kind of garden
vegetable (which the grub spares,) grows well and comes to great
perfection: cabbages weigh from ten to twenty-seven pounds each:
melons and pumpkins also grow very fine.

I think situations might be found on the island, where cotton
and indigo will thrive: of the latter, there are two trees, both
which are very large and fine, but the ant destroys the blossom
as fast as it flowers. Rice has been sown twice, viz. once each
year, but the south-east winds blighted a great part of it: that
which escaped the blight, yielded a great increase. The quantity
of ground cleared and in cultivation on the 13th of March, 1790,
was thirty acres belonging to the crown, and about eighteen acres
cleared by free people and convicts, for their gardens.

It was my intention to put as many labourers as could be
spared from other necessary work, to clear ground for
cultivation; and I had reason to believe that I should have had
from fifty to seventy acres sown with grain by the end of
October: I purposed to continue clearing ground in Arthur's Vale,
and on the hill round it, in order to have all the cultivated
lands belonging to the public as much connected together as
possible; this would have answered much better for the growth of
wheat, Indian corn, or barley, than their being sown in confined
situations; which experience had shown were not at all
productive: the parroquets and other birds would not have
destroyed so much of the grain before it was got in, and it might
be much better guarded from thieves than if the cultivated
grounds were dispersed in different parts of the island: another
very material reason for clearing all the ground in this
particular situation was, that the barn was situated in the
center of the vale.

I proposed build