In the English old settled islands, three hogsheads of sugar for every acre in canes, on an average, is considered as a very moderate produce; for, after good seasonable weather previous to the crop, some lands have been known to yield from four to five hogsheads per acre. From the great disproportion in point of yielding, between the lands of other islands and those of Dominica, the superior fertility of the former may be inferred; which, however, is by no means the case: for the lands of the old islands, from having been a considerable number of years under cultivation, are so much worn out, as to require great attention to make them bear the culture of the sugar-cane. And the Planters there are obliged to let the land lie a year or two fallow occasionally, or only plant such vegetables as yams and potatoes, the roots of which open and enrich the soil; beside, it must be well dunged previous to planting. Again, no more than one-half in some plantations, in others only one-third part of the land is yearly planted with canes; the other part being prepared for growing rattoons, turned into pasture for cattle, or given to the negroes for gardens, in order to improve and render it fit for the canes. The rattoons, it is necessary to acquaint the readers, who may probably not know the sugar-cane, are second canes, which spring from the roots of plant canes, after they have been cut down and made sugar of; which the rattoons produce in like manner, but generally not in an equal quantity with the other. Of these, the lands of the old islands will bear but one crop, in Dominica they will rattoon four or five years running, and the last year’s yielding of sugar will be as great as the first. The sugar estates in the old islands have generally a number of barren spots in them, called “Yellow spots;” the sterility of which no art can overcome so as to make them bear canes to any perfection; for though they will spring up, yet they soon change from a green to a yellow colour, and rot in the ground. And, moreover, the old islands are frequently subject to long and severe droughts, which never happen in Dominica; and there is every reason to suppose they never will, from the great number and heighth of its mountains, together with the vast quantity of woods, which it will be next to impossible ever to clear away in some parts of the island. The land of Dominica is quite new, very little of it having been more than thirty years under cultivation, and a great part of it, it is probable, never since the creation; the soil thereof produces vegetation so quick, that it is truly amazing; and this vigour is particularly conspicuous in the sugar-cane, for it has been seen there of the length of sixteen feet and upwards, and double the thickness that it in general attain in other islands.