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[Page 6]
The inhabitants are perfectly acquainted with the influence the water has got in prolonging, and refinning the fibres at the period when the wool begins to ripen, in consequence, they either chuse their plantation on the banks of the river, which are here numerous; or construct ponds, and reservoirs, in the midst of their plantations, from whence, they assist the vegetation when it chiefly requires, this is as I have above observed at the period when the cotton begins to pod.
As the lower fields are under water for a considerable time, and this species of cotton remarkably tender in it first stage of vegetation; the inhabitants commonly wait sowing it, till the powerfullest rains are over, and suffer these plantation to lay for four crops, or two seasons, after which, when the wool is entirely gathered in, which is in the month of December; they take up the shrubs by the roots, plough the ground immediately, and sow the same, with Gram, wheat, and barley. after this grain is gathered in they suffer these fields to lay for pasturage for two seasons and on the expiration of this ascribed period, they cultivate these grounds again with the same species of cotton. They make no use of any manure, but the remaining stumps of their different grain, and the roots of their common pasture grass which is the Nardus indica, and which by it prolificy of vegetation furnishes them with good pasture, and in some degree manure their grounds with it powerfull roots.
I have found this species of cotton wild in the mountains, the wool of which though uncultivated was by no means inferior to that I have seen and obtained in the Brodra Purgunah, I am therefore apt to thinck, that it will do well in those parts of the West Indies where no other species cant be cultivated, as declivity of the hills: it must be however observed by the planters that it is not sown on a soil of a cold nature, for the wool will never come to maturity and the young pods fall commonly a sacrifice to the vermin which is peculiar to this species.
N. 2. The yellow flowerd Ahmood cotton.
I have observed in the description of the former that it requires a light heating soil to promote maturity, This yellow species however requires just the reverse and this necessary to chuse for it, soils of a cold, moist and heavy nature.