The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1899-08-24


| Golden Medical Discovery look out
for him. He is either ignorant or dis
honest and YOU can't trust him.
ture at Washington will furnish the plants
free of charge; his wife and children can
pick and dry the leaves, and if he gain
nothing but tie filling of the family tea
caddy, the experiment is worth trying.
Another great agricultural pursuit of
the near future, both in Cuba and Porto
Rico, will be the raising of cacao, the
| plant that produces the chocolate bean.
1t grows to perfection in these islands,
where the natives consume a great deal of
chocolate. But in all Cuba there is not
chocolate factory, expensive machinery
| being required to reduce the bean to the
powder from which the beverage is made.
| Indeed there are almost no factories of any
sort in Cuba, because it has always been
SPAIN policy to discourage manufacture
ing in her colonies, SO as to compel
the people to buy of the unnatural mother
country.
| The time is surely coming when Cuba
! and Porto Rico will be the great fruit
producing regions Of the western hems-
| phere. If prune culture pays so well in
| California why not better in Cuba, where
! land is cheaper and where, fol at least a
century TO come there VIII be no danger
of over production? Just SO with olives,
Almonds chestnuts and many other things
| that are now comparatively unknown in
the West Indies. Oranges of exquisite
flavor grow wild in all parts of Cuba, but
no attention has ever been laid to their
cultivation for expectation. Cocoanuts
and other spontaneous growths of the
island, are always in demand. Besides
multitude OF tropical fruits, little known
and not usually relished by the Anglo
Saxon race, there are many less perishable
varieties, such as guayas, tamarinds,
mangoes and aguacates, which might
protitably be conserved, or with proper
care transported uncooked.
AS to bananas, the field is practically
unlimited. To be sure-like love, and
the Scriptures, and many other good
things, it is an sold. old story" and the
same may be said OF wheat potatoes, corn
and other stats of life which the world
goes on eating. No crop requiring small
capital to grow is so readily marketable
and always profitable as bananas. They
| Al l,t+1
and yield fifty times as much IN weight
to the acre as wheat. Suppose you con-
| cluded to turn banana planter and paid as
high as five dollars the acre for twenty
acres of we'll cleared land in the vicinity
of Trinidad, Santa Clara, OF any other
pleasant Cuban city. You might obtain
any number of plants wild, for no cost
except the hire of man to dig them; but
by far the better way would be to 90 to
some established plantation and buy
''suckers," which sell for twenty i've
dollars the thousand. Setting the plants
fifteen feet apart, your twenty acres will
accommodate about four thousand plants,
costing one hundred dollars. Add to
that amount the price of your land,
twenty dollars for wedding and another
twenty for harvesting, and the total out
lay foots up to $240. The suckers shoot
up like magic and in a few months each
has a stalk, called the ''stool," from
twelve to twenty feet in the air, with
single gigantic bunch of fruit glowing
like gold near the top. The lowest price
bananas ever bring is twenty five cents
the bunch, American money, on the
plantation. If carried to New Orleans,
they command from thirty to fifty cents
the bunch, and when successfully trans
ported to England, (Which is not an easy
matter, for then they must be picked very
green and allowed to ripen in the dark,
without bruising,) they bring as high as
two dollars the bunch. Reckoning at the
lowest, your four thousand punches, with
no cost OF risk of transportation, will sell
where they grew for a thousand dollars,
realizing clear profit of $3.50.
The second year, two punches may be
expected from each stool, or eight thous-
and punches in all, yielding two thousand
dollars, minus part of the cost of the
previous year. This will continue until
the stools are exhausted, when they must
be grubbed up and new suckers planted
in their stead. With the trees fifteen feet
apart, suckers may be set between them
when the first sign of exhaustion appears,
SO that there need be no break in the
yield of the plantation. AS each stool
sends up six or eight stems by the end of
the third year, it is possible to reap that
number of punches from each original
tree, and often four or five stems are allow
ed to produce fruit. But that is not the
best way, for the fruit will be much finer
of only two stems are permitted to ma