Excerpt from A Guide to the West Indies and Bermudas
Indigenous fruits and vegetables are numerous, compris ing many kinds wholly unknown to the temperate zone. Sugar, cacao, coffee, and tobacco are the great staples, others in order of importance being bananas, oranges, lemons, cocoanuts, cotton, limes, pimento, indigo, nutmegs, maize, ginger, annatto, aloes, sassafras, castor-beans, yams, sweet potatoes, eddoes, manioc. The varied fruits include, be sides those mentioned, the mango, custard-apple, cashew, grape-fruit, pineapple, pomegranate, mamey, papaya, plan tain, Shaddock, Soursop, star-apple, sweet-sop, tamarind, chirimoya, avocado pear, granadilla, Sapodilla, etc., etc.
Many islands can boast forests of mahogany, fragrant cedar, lignum vitae, logwood, ironwood, green-heart, fustic, palms in many Species, and scores of other valuable woods.
Gold, which was at one time very abundant, is yet found in several streams of Santo Domingo and Porto Rico. Cop per and iron occur in Cuba, Jamaica, and the Virgin Islands, which last also yield large amounts Of phosphatic rock. Scarcely an island in the West Indies exists without thermal or mineral springs, while those of Cuba, Jamaica and Porto Rico have won a reputation for the efficacy Of their waters, in the cure of numerous diseases, that has be come world-wide.
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