“What luxury!” he exclaimed, “to sit in this very seat once more, to look again on this landscape; to be regaled with such fragrance as I have only dreamed of since my childhood, and to feast on such fruit,” helping himself to an orange, “as the English at home have little more idea of than the Laplanders.” “Dear me!” said Miss Grace Mitchelson, “I thought the English ate oranges. I am sure there was something about oranges in what papa read out of the newspaper about the theatre.” “Yes,” said her sister Rosa, “did not they throw orange-peel on the stage, papa?” Alfred explained that the oranges which are thought a great treat in England, are such as would be thrown away as only half-ripe at Demerara. His father looked pleased as he praised one after another of the things in which a tropical climate excels a temperate one. Mr. Mitchelson stopped him, however, in the midst of his observations on the fertility of the soils which stretched from the height on which they sat to the distant ocean. “Fertile indeed they have been,” said he, “and fertile many of them still are; but richness of soil is not a lasting advantage like a fine climate. It wears out fast, very fast, as I can tell to my cost. If you had seen what yonder cane-field produced when it first came into my hands, and could compare it with last year’s crop, you would be surprised at the change.” “Do soils become exhausted faster at Demerara than elsewhere?” asked Mr. Bruce. “If not, there is a poor prospect before our whole race. One would fear they must starve in time. What do they say in England, son?” “They say, sir, that soils used to be exhausted there, and that, as a matter of course, they were suffered to lie fallow from time to time; but I believe sugar-planters do not like fallows.” “We cannot afford them,” said Mitchelson. “We must have crops year by year to answer our expenses; and when we have short leases, we must make the most of them, whatever becomes of the land when we have done with it.” “English farmers are so far of your opinion, that the best of them say they cannot afford fallows; but neither do they exhaust their soils.” “How in the name of wonder do they manage then?” “They practise convertible husbandry to a greater extent than we planters ever dream of. Wheat and barley exhaust the land like canes; but by growing green crops in turn with grain, and changing corn land into pasture, they renew the powers of the soil, and may go on for ever, for aught I see, till fallows are banished from the land, and every rood is fertile in its due proportion.” “That is all very well,” said Mitchelson; “but it is no example for us. Sugar is our staple, and sugar we must grow. We have little use for green crops, and less for pasture.”