“Looking at it from my point of view—the lazy man’s outlook—I can see nothing so inviting as coffee culture, unless it be a fat ‘living’ in an English country church,” says a writer. For myself, the one thing that appealed to me above all others was the cultivation of the banana. The returns are quick, the income regular and the profits large. I travelled through the banana region of Honduras, where for thirty miles the railroad passed by one plantation after another of the broad-leaved banana plants growing as high as fifteen feet. Great fortunes have been made by the banana-growers of that country and Costa Rica. This fruit flourishes best in the lowlands. The preparation of the ground is very simple, for the young banana plants are set out among the piles of underbrush left after clearing and which soon decay in that climate. After nine months or a year the plants begin to bear, and each stalk will produce one bunch of bananas. The stalk is then cut down and a new one, or several, will spring up from the roots and will bear in the same length of time. Thus a banana plantation that is carefully looked after will produce a marketable crop each week in the year, so that there is a constant revenue coming in to the owner. The cultivation of this delicious fruit, for which there is an ever-increasing market, brings the quickest return of any tropical product.
Sugar cane can be raised profitably as the stalks grow high with many joints and have a greater percentage of saccharine than in most countries where it is cultivated. Furthermore it does not require replanting so frequently. Cacao is another truly tropical product. It is from the cacao bean that chocolate is made. The trees are usually transplanted and bear in about four years and the beans are gathered three or four times a year. They are then removed from the pods and dried in the sun. The trees will bear for many years. Orange culture along modern scientific lines, such as are used in California and Florida, would be profitable, for the crop matures earlier and could be marketed long before the fruit has ripened in those states. The Mexicans are great rice eaters and there is a good field for its culture. The cocoanut palm offers good returns as there is a good market for its fruit. Rubber grows wild and many plantations have been set out in rubber trees. In the past year Mexico has shipped more than two million pounds of crude rubber, and the production is increasing. Vast tracts of mahogany are found down toward Guatemala in the states of Campeche and Tabasco. These great trees are cut down, hewn square and then hauled by mules to a waterway where they are formed into rafts and floated down to the ports. There is much waste in the present crude way of cutting and marketing this valuable wood. Logwood and other dyewoods are found in the same forests. The world’s supply of chicle also comes from the same source.