With one exception the limitless resources of Santo Domingo with reference to fruit culture have remained untouched. The single exception was the United Fruit Company's banana plantation at Sosua, about ten miles east of Puerto Plata, and even this estate is at present, in consequence of the greater attractiveness of sugar, being converted into a sugar plantation. Otherwise there has been no attempt to raise fruit for export, though the sweet and bitter orange, the lemon, the lime, the grapefruit and the paradoxical sweet lemon, grow wild. Pineapples are raised only for the small home consumption. An obstacle to the cultivation of such fruits at the present time would be the absence of rapid fruit steamers to the United States. The fruits peculiar to the torrid zone all grow in profusion and among them the native is fondest of the juicy mango, the guava, the aguacate or alligator pear, the anon or custard apple, the guanabana or soursop, the mamon or sweetsop, the mamey or marmalade fruit, the nispero or sapodilla and the tamarind. From the large palm-groves about Samana Bay cocoanuts and a little copra are exported, principally to the United States. Small attempts have been made to cultivate other products to which the country is adapted. Growers of cotton and hemp are encouraged by results, but a rice plantation established in the swamp-lands near the head of Samana Bay proved a failure rather on account of errors of management than for other reasons. In the forests which cover her mountains Santo Domingo has hardwoods, dyewoods and building timber of inestimable value. Only a generation ago mahogany trees grew all the way to the water's edge, but years of wasteful cutting have exhausted the nearer supplies and the more valuable woods must now be sought in the interior. In the mountains and on the high plateaus of the interior there are hundreds of square miles of Spanish cedar and longleaf pine. The principal woods exported are mahogany, guayacan, known to commerce as lignum vitae (one of the hardest woods and so heavy that when in loading the steamer a log drops into the sea it sinks to the bottom like iron), bera or bastard lignum vitae, espinillo or yellowwood, campeche or logwood (a famous dyeing material), sparwood and cedar. Other forest products exported are dividivi, a tanning bark, and resins. Most of these exports go to the United States and England. For the preparation of lumber for local needs there are sawmills in La Vega and Santiago de los Caballeros.