satinwood, and cedar, as well as logwood, fustic,
and others which afford dyestuffs. T h e palm and
the bamboo are common, and the silk cotton and
the pimento are almost characteristic of this island,
— both trees of beauty, and the latter furnishing large
supplies of that aromatic product, allspice. I t is a
wide-spreading and picturesque evergreen. One
variety of the palm, the Palma Christi, is a source
of castor oil.
T h e general verdure and vegetation that richly
clothes the island is mostly that common to these
tropic lands of the Caribbean Sea. There is a
great variety of ferns— some great tree-ferns— in
the mountains, and orchids lavishly decorate the
forests, while a profusion of flowering plants and
shrubs delight the eye, including the aloe, the yucca,
and the datura, which are not so common elsewhere.
Maize grows luxuriantly, and willingly yields two
or three crops a year to the industrious, and of prosaic
vegetables and fruits there is no end. T h e list
suggests a lesson in geography or a passage from the
encyclopaedia — yams, plantains, cassava, ochra,
arrowroot, cacao, ginger, breadfruit, tamarinds,
mangoes, pineapples, oranges, lemons, and so on,
and so on. Nearly all European vegetables can be
raised successfully on the higher lands, and guinea
grass waves profusely over wide stretches of pasture-
land, making cattle-raising an easy and profitable
process. A few plants were brought from Africa in
the old slave-trading days, including the poisonous
horse bean, which was used in weird incantations,
and to which the superstitious blacks still attribute