383. Sugar plan tations.—The mill on the sugar plan tation is a big building having tall smoke-stacks and much machin ery. So much cane is needed to keepa mill busy through out the season that cane fields may stretch as far as one can see. (Fig. 623.) At harvest-time the cane is hauled to the factory on little tempor ary railroads or on carts drawn by oxen. These oxen are fed on the leaves that fall from the cane. The sugar-fields cover only about one twentieth of the surface of Cuba, but the yield of this small area is so great that it needs a year to take all of the sugar to market, even with two ships carrying away a load of five thousand tons each on every work day. Cuba also sends us pineapples and tobacco.
384. Porto Rico.—Porto Rico is the largest of the American possessions in the West Indies. It is a densely populated island, about twice the size of Delaware, but it has six times as many people. Most of the land of Porto Rico is hilly or mountainous. For this reason it is well drained and, therefore, much more healthful than many tropic coun tries. The greater part of the people are white, and of the Spanish race, because this is land was for a long time a Spanish possession.
Most of the people make their living on small farms, where they grow bananas, sweet potatoes, and many garden vegetables for their own use.
The trade is largely with the United States, the chief export being sugar, which is grown on the level land near the sea. Next in importance is tobacco; then come coconuts and fruit. Some delicious coffee is grown on the highlands. There is an agricultural experiment station in Porto Rico. We can see the importance of this station, and of good steamship lines, from the fact that the trade in grapefruit grew from $7,000 in 1907, to $700,000 in 1919.
The Porto Rico women make by hand beautiful embroidery, which they sell to people of other countries.
385. Jamaica and Haiti.—Jamaica and Haiti export excellent coffee from their hills, and Jamaica also exports many bananas from her lowlands. The black men of Haiti cut mahogany from their forests to be made into furniture.
386. The Bahamas.—To the north of the four mountainous Greater Antilles are the low, flat Bahama Islands, which lie close to southern Florida. These limestone islands, which, combined, are about the size of Con necticut, were made by coral animals that live in the warm sea. Such islands have a shallow, dry soil (Sec. 21), not so good for agriculture as the deeper, moister lands of the more mountainous islands. The chief export of the Bahamas is sisal, like that which grows on the dry limestone soils of Yucatan.
The people of the Bahamas, like the people of Key West, Florida (Sec. 23), gather sponge in the shallow water near their islands.
387. Trinidad.—The British Island of Trinidad sends us cacao beans, from which chocolate is made, and of which we shall learn more in another part of the book. (Figs. 575, 576.) Froth a wonderful lake of asphalt on this island come shiploads of this black substance to pave our city streets. In the lake, asphalt flows slowly like a huge lump of dough, but it is so thick and so tough that it has to be dug out of the lake with a shovel. The morning after the holes have been dug, they are again full of asphalt.
388. Cities and trade.—Trading is much easier for the people of the West I4dies than for the people of Mexico or Central America.
There are few swamps, and ships can come close to the well-drained plains where the people live and have their plantations. The largest West Indian city, Havana, is the capital of the largest island. Other impor tant cities are San Juan, Kingston, and Port au Prince. Locate them. At these ports many steamships from the United States and Europe call to leave and take on freight.
389. Coaling stations.—The town of Char lotte Amalie on St. Thomas, one of the Virgin Islands, which the United States bought from Denmark in 1917, is visited by many steamers that stop for coal en route to or from the Panama Canal. The island of Barbados is also an important coaling station for vessels on the trip between New York and South America. Port of Spain, in Trinidad, has an important trade, because steamers leave goods there to be sent on to the little towns along the coast of Venezuela.
390. Food and trade.—The West Indian shops are filled with clothes from Europe: tools and hardware, corn meal, wheat flour, and salt pork from the United States; and dried codfish from Newfoundland.
Salt pork and dried fish are important foods in such places, because they will keep in hot, moist weather when fresh meat would spoil over night. If the people do not choose to buy American food, they can live com fortably on bananas, sweet potatoes, cassava, beans, and other vegetables and fruits grown in their own gardens.
391. A winter vacation land.—From our Atlantic and Gulf ports the journey to these beautiful islands is not a long one. After four or five days at sea, the steamer comes in sight of the beautiful green hills, waving palms, and friendly, laughing people of the West Indies. It makes a pleasant winter vacation to leave the December snows of New York or St. Louis and go to this land that knows no frost.