From the large palm-groves
about Samana Bay cocoanuts and a little copra are exported,
principally to the United States.
Small attempts have been made to cultivate other products to which the
country is adapted. Growers of cotton and hemp are encouraged by
results, but a rice plantation established in the swamp-lands near the
head of Samana Bay proved a failure rather on account of errors of
management than for other reasons.
In the forests which cover her mountains Santo Domingo has hardwoods,
dyewoods and building timber of inestimable value. Only a generation
ago mahogany trees grew all the way to the water's edge, but years of
wasteful cutting have exhausted the nearer supplies and the more
valuable woods must now be sought in the interior. In the mountains
and on the high plateaus of the interior there are hundreds of square
miles of Spanish cedar and longleaf pine. The principal woods exported
are mahogany, guayacan, known to commerce as lignum vitae (one of the
hardest woods and so heavy that when in loading the steamer a log
drops into the sea it sinks to the bottom like iron), bera or bastard
lignum vitae, espinillo or yellowwood, campeche or logwood (a famous
dyeing material), sparwood and cedar.
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