Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/476

460 the fig roots, and by putting the pieces together you may perhaps read that Hier legt begraven den Wel Edele Gestrenge Heer . The despotic owner of all he surveyed—land, animals, men, women, and children—is now gone, and Nature has spurned his handiwork under her feet.

Outside the forest region and near the coast is a line of swamps, and on the rich alluvium reclaimed from these the sugar, cotton, and coffee plantations of the present century were established. Several hundred have been abandoned at different times, but these do not become incorporated with the forest. From the swamp they were reclaimed, and to that state they have mostly returned.

When in cultivation the estate is walled in, as it were, with earthen dams on every side, those at the back and front beingmost important. By means of the former the swamp water is kept out and by the latter the sea, while the inclosed area is freed from the heavy rainfall by means of sluices and draining engines. When abandoned these arrangements soon get out of order. The outfalls are choked, the dams are perforated by crabs or broken down by floods, and soon the ground becomes more and more sodden. The sugar-cane plants which were left in the ground sprout freely, but, as they now have to compete with a rampant host of weeds, they are unable to cover the ground, but grow in isolated patches. This, of course, allows their enemies all the more scope, and the competition soon becomes serious. The delicate Bahama grass (Cynodon dactylon) comes first and overruns the surface, but this has soon to give way to a lot of wiry, prickly shrubs which are fitted to grow almost anywhere. These include black sage (Varronia curassavica), prickly solanums, sensitive plants, and wild indigo. As they steal their nourishment from the soil, the canes never become strong enough to smother them, but languish more and more until obliged to succumb. By this time the seeds of a number of straggling bushes and trees have found their opportunity, and the clammy cherry (Cordia), hog-plum (Spondias), and wild fig come up here and there, growing very quickly and partly ousting out the smaller plants. Alongside the draining canals thickets of prickly shrubs and scrambling vines soon make their appearance, and, as they grow, obstruct the outflow of water more and more. Then, as the water rises after a day's rainfall of perhaps seven or eight inches, the front dam is washed away and the sea comes over at the next spring tide, filling the trenches in front with brackish water. The courida (Avicennia) and mangrove (Rhizophora) which guard the shore now advance, and with them an army of beach weeds, including that triply armed invader, the nicker (Giulandina bonducella). Soon crabsperforate every part of the sea dam, and the whole front becomes a great mangrove swamp.