Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 October 1884 — A Remarkable Island. [ARTICLE]

A Remarkable Island.

The whole Island of Bermuda is a mass of rock of the coral limestone order. But to say that it is a rocky islet would give a very erroneous impression of it to the Northern person. With us a rocky place is barren and useless. But this rock is soft, and" trees and plants grow in it almost as well as in earth. There is hardly a bare spot on the whole island except where it has been cleared. In. some places are large tracts of pine wood; in other# the ground is hidden by dense masseh of a sort of chapparal, growing ten or twelve feet high, and nobody would suspect the foundation of it all to be solid rock. There is a foot or two of soil in some places that has come from nobody knows where. But the usual process of making a garden is to break up an acre or so of the rock with a sledge and crow-bar, mash it up fine, and mix in enough earth to prevent the rock from hardening again. In this compound anything under the sun will grow, and grow luxuriantly. A man who takes this much trouble to make a garden can have green peas and fresh lettuce and all other vegetables on his table every day in the year. There is no season when vegetation does not flourish, and when the garden is once made it is always there. Men go out with crow-bars and set out cocoa-nut trees, and in a few years they are tall and beautiful and bear a cocoanut (so the saying is) for every day in the year. There is nourishment for .plants in -the material of the rock. Where this coral limestone rock came from is a question that scientific people can settle to suit themselves. It makes no difference where it came from; it is here, and is very useful. Nearly all of the houses are built of it. You have only to ! saw down into the quarries to get the most beautiful big blocks of it that make handsome and substantial houses. The bldbcks harden by expos ure so the air, and in this climate soon become as durable as granite. Out of the rock, too, water-tanks are built to oatch rain water. Every house has its tank. There are springs and wells, but I believe the rain water is considered healthier to drink.