Almost all vegetables and fruits in the World have sugar in their juice; they are sweet. Some have a great deal, some have very little. But two vegetables have such sweet juice that they are raised for the sugar that can be made out of their juice. These vegetables are the beet and sugar-cane. You know what a beet looks like. Sugarcane looks something like stalks of corn. Men press the juice out of the cane and boil it to make sugar. In Cuba they grow more sugar-cane than any other place

The Island of Haiti—the tat of the tit-tat-to islands—although it is not large, has two little countries on it. Both these countries are republics like the United States, with presidents and senators and representatives chosen by the people, but their presidents are colored and their senators and representatives are also colored. That may seem strange until I tell you that the people on the island are colored too.

When Columbus died he was buried on this island of Haiti. Many years after, men dug up what they thought were Columbus’s bones and sent them back to Spain, where they are kept in a great cathedral. But many people say they were not Columbus’s bones at all that they took back, but some one else’s, and that Columbus’s body still lies in Haiti.

Puerto Rico, the third of the tit-tat-to islands of the West Indies, belongs to the United States. In Puerto Rico they raise tobacco too, but there seems to be some difference in the land, for they can’t seem to raise quite as good tobacco as the people in Cuba do.

Jamaica is a small island south of the tit-tat-to islands. It belongs to England. In Jamaica they grow many of the bananas that we eat. They are picked when they are still green, but by the time they have been shipped to the United States and are put in the fruit shops on sale they are yellow and ripe—sometimes. If you eat them before they are ripe, you may need a little Jamaica ginger, which is good for “tummy aches”—that comes from Jamaica too.

Tobacco and sugar, sponges and early vegetables, bananas and lilies!—pirates would have turned up their noses in disgust if they had captured a ship laden with such a cargo!