5. Of the total area of Cuba only about 4,000 square miles are cultivated, part is unreclaimed, part covered with forests containing fine mahogany and ebony trees, and wide tracts in the interior are utterly unknown. Sugar, tobacco, coffee, rice, and cotton, are the staple products. Cuba yields more sugar than any other country in the world, the yearly export being valued at from £12,000,000 to £16,000,000. The annual crop of tobacco is worth about £4,000,000, and the making of cigars gives employment to a large number of people. In Havana alone there are 125 factories, some of them employing as many as 600 hands. Honey, wax, and rum, are exported in considerable quantities.

6. The chief town of this island and the metropolis of the West Indies is Havana.* It lies on the northwest side of the island, near the Florida Channel. It is the great port for the export of sugar. Its harbour is one of the finest in the world.

7. Hayti is a mountainous forest island of about the same size as Scotland. The first European settlements were founded on its shores, and here African slavery was first introduced into America. The island is so extremely fertile as to have been called the "Garden of the West Indies." It yields all the vegetable products of the tropics in the greatest profusion, and abounds in mines of all the more useful and many of the precious metals.

8. The island is divided into two Republics-Hayti, the Negro State on the west, and San Domingo, the Mulatto State, on the east. It is thus an almost thoroughly "black island." There the negro predominates, and the white men are treated as inferior beings. In San Domingo the white man can own property and hold office, but in Hayti, by law, at least, he cannot. Both States are sunk in the deepest barbarism. "The fertile plains lay untilled; there is not a plough in the whole island; the rich mines are unworked; vast forests containing abundance of valuable timber are left to rot; the towns are in ruins; and the men spend their time in idleness.”

* Population 200,000.

Port-au-Prince is the chief town of Hayti, and San Domingo of the Republic of the same name.

9. The only island of the Greater Antilles group which belongs to Great Britain is Jamaica, "the land of wood and water." This is the largest of the British West India Islands, and covers an area equal to about half the size of Wales. It was one of the earliest of the islands of America discovered by Columbus. He called it St. Jago, and under this name it was taken possession of by Spain. In 1665 it was captured by the English, and finally ceded to us in 1670.

10. Jamaica was at one time the richest and most prosperous of the English colonies. Its land is still among the most fertile on the earth, but its people have fallen away from their former prosperity, and the country is not now in a flourishing condition. This state of things was partially brought about when the planters were deprived of forced labour by the emancipation of the slaves, and hastened by the revolt of the negroes in 1865.

11. The island is flat along the coast, and on the south side there are many shoals and reefs which render navigation difficult, but there are some good harbours. The interior is hilly and intersected by several ranges of mountains and deep, densely-wooded valleys. The mountains, which rise in places to between seven and eight thousand feet, extend generally from east to west, and roughly divide the island into two halves, known as the north side and the south side.

12. The south side is characterised by extensive plains, lagoons, and marshes. The north side is distinguished by the great number of rivers and streams, and by the wild grandeur of its mountain torrents, rugged cliffs, and lovely bays. "The north coast is incomparably beautiful. Bold bluffs, charming inlets, everywhere an abundance of rushing and roaring waters, green meadow lands soft as velvet, dark groves, songsters and butterflies, all combine to render this coast a veritable garden of Eden.”

13. Jamaica is well supplied with water. Besides

*The chief range is the Blue Mountains, and West Peak (7,335 feet) is the highest point.

several small lakes there are some 200 rivers, large and small, swarming with fish and alligators, but none of them-except the Black River-navigable, even for small craft. The hill slopes and alluvial plains in the north are the most fertile portions of the island, and produce sugar, coffee, allspice, and ginger.

14. The climate, on account of the varied altitude of the surface, is not the same in every part of the island. The north is more salubrious than the south, while in the mountain districts, such as at the military station of Newcastle on the Blue Mountains, the temperature occasionally sinks to 60° or 70°. There is, however, very little variation between one season and another, unless, indeed, it is during the spring and autumn rains in May and October. Many of the rivers are almost empty in the dry season, but during the rains they become fierce mountain torrents, and sometimes overflow their banks and do great damage.

15. Kingston is the port and largest town, and is now the seat of government. It contains a population of about 36,000. Spanish Town was for a long time the capital of the island, and in the prosperous times of the colony was the seat of a gay court, and the home of wealth, learning, and wisdom. Now it is a stranger to all these things. "Long-tailed pigs wander about the streets; carrion crows pick up garbage in its once thronged thoroughfares; and at the back of the handsome square, where the King's House is situated, the negroes have built their shingled huts."

16. The population is estimated at about half a million, of whom only about 13,000 are whites, and even these are gradually diminishing in number. The chief articles of export are sugar, rum, tobacco, and fruit. In 1879 the value of these articles exported was nearly £1,000,000.

17. The Spanish island of Porto Rico, like Cuba and Hayti, has extensive wooded hills in its interior. It is the healthiest island of all the Antilles, and generally is in a more prosperous condition. Though only a twelfth the size of Cuba, it contains a population half as numerous. It has flourishing tobacco and sugar plantations. San Juan is the chief town.

Section VI.-SOUTH AMERICA.

LESSON LXII I.

SOUTH AMERICA.-EXTENT-COUNTRIES-SURFACE.

1. South America is a peninsula triangular in shape and joined to the Northern continent by the Isthmus of Panama. Its greatest length from north to south is about 4,550 miles, and its greatest breadth—namely, from the northern point of Peru to the extreme east of Brazil -is about 3,200 miles. It covers an area of six and a half millions of square miles, about one-fourth of which is in the temperate zone, and the remainder within the tropics.

2. Practically the whole of South America was at one period claimed by Spain and Portugal. Now, the once Portuguese colony of Brazil is an independent empire. With the exception of Brazil and the English, Dutch, and French colonies of Guiana on the north-east coast, the whole of the countries of South America are republics, with constitutions modelled on that of the United States of North America. These republics are Columbia and Venezuela on the north; Ecuador, Peru, and Chili, on the west; and Bolivia, the Argentine Confederation, Paraguay, and Uruguay, in the centre and south. Patagonia is claimed both by Chili and the Argentine Republic.

3. Taking the configuration of its surface as the basis of the classification, this vast mass of land is usually divided into five great regions. These are (1) the regions skirting the Pacific; (2) the basin of the Orinoco River; (3) the basin of the Amazon; (4) the region of the Pampas; (5) the upland country of Brazil on the east.

4. The region of the Pacific is in general low, from 50 to 150 miles in breadth and 4,000 miles in length. Its extremities are fertile, while the middle is a sandy desert.

5. The basin of the Orinoco is a country consisting mainly of plains or steppes called llanos. These are either

destitute of wood, or only dotted with trees, but are covered with a tall herbage during a part of the year. Cattle pasture here in thousands. In this region the heat is intense, especially during the dry season, when the dry soil cracks into long fissures in which lizards and serpents lie in a state of torpor.

6. The basin of the Amazon is a vast plain more than half as large as Europe, with a rich soil and humid climate. It is covered for the most part with dense impenetrable forest in which live innumerable wild animals and a few savages, who subsist by hunting and fishing.

7. The region of the Pampas comprises the great southern plains watered by the Plata and the numerous streams descending from the eastern slopes of the Andes. The plains are dry, and in some places barren, but in general are covered with rank weeds and tall grass on which feed prodigious numbers of sheep, cattle, and horses.

8. The country of Brazil eastward presents alternate ridge and valley, covered with wood on the side next the Atlantic, and opening into steppes, or pastures, in the interior.

9. The great chain of the Andes is the chief mountain system of South America and the most prominent figure in its physical features. It runs through the whole length of the continent on the west from Cape Horn to the Isthmus of Panama and approximately parallel to the Pacific coast. This mountain system forms a great rampart, having an average height of 11,000 or 12,000 feet, and a width varying from 20 to 300 or 400 miles. In most places the chain rises to heights of several thousand feet, and upon this chain rest two or three principal mountain ridges, enclosing lofty plains or valleys separated one from the other by mountain knots or intersecting ridges. This chain of the Andes is remarkable for its high average elevation, and for the vast number of active and extinct volcanic peaks everywhere met with. The highest peak is Aconcagua* in Chili, the highest active volcano is Cotopaxi,† in Ecuador. + 19,500 feet.

* 23,290 feet.