[Illustration: BRANCH AND BUD OF PIMENTO (ALL-SPICE).]
The trees bear fruit when about seven years old. The berries are gathered green and dried in the sun. The branches to which the berries are attached are broken off by boys and thrown to girls and women, who pick off the berries, and take them to the drying places. One tree sometimes bears a hundred pounds.
The tree likes the hills and mountains along the sea, a hot climate and a dry atmosphere.
THE NUTMEG TREE.
The nutmeg tree grows to a height of thirty to fifty feet. The ripe fruit looks somewhat like the apricot on the outside. It bursts in two and shows the dark nut covered with mace, a bright scarlet. This is stripped off and pressed flat. The shells are broken open when perfectly dry, and the nuts powdered with lime to prevent the attacks of worms.
The tree bears the sixth or seventh year,—the nuts becoming ripe six months after the flower appears. Twenty thousand nuts are sometimes gathered from one tree.
Other important growths we find to be pepper, which begins to bear when five years old and may bear for thirty years; the vanilla bean, which proves to be very profitable when properly cared for; and cacao, which requires eight years to come to full fruitage, but is an invaluable plant.
MINERALS.
Puerto Rico has no mines or minerals of any consequence, except a little iron. Foundries for magnetic iron have been established at Ponce, San Juan and Mayaguez.
Gold, silver, copper and coal are known to exist in small quantities beneath the surface, but not in sufficient amount to be mined.