Lying on a rugged spur stretching southward two miles from the main ridge of the Blue Mountains, the Cinchona reservation extends upward from the cleared slopes at the 4,500-ft. level to the well-wooded peaks 6,100 feet high, in the main range itself. Practically all the Blue Mountan country above the 4,500-foot level is reserved by the government as a water shed, and thus forms an immense area of mountain forest that may be used for floristic exploration and ecological study. At a spot commanding a remarkable prospect, on the shoulder near the south end of the spur, stands the Cinchona residence and laboratories, situated at an altitude of 4,900 feet. The house is the highest dwelling of any pretensions anywhere in the West Indies.
History
The idea of developing a hill garden, or "European garden," as he called it, was conceived by a governor of the colony, Sir Basil Keith, in 1774. He planned especially to introduce the cultivation of European vegetables in the cool, moist hill country. The plan was first realized in 1869, through the energy of a later governor, Sir John Peter Grant, whose primary object was the encouragement of the culture of Peruvian bark, coffee and tea. Here, in the early seventies, scores of acres were cleared and planted with seedlings of several species of Cinchona. These were derived from plants brought out of Peru in 1860 by Clements Markham. In 1874 the Jamaican government organized at Cinchona an experiment station, which became the center of botanical work in the island. A director's residence, other dwellings, offices, laboratories, greenhouses, servants' quarters and stables were erected. A beautifully planned garden was developed about these buildings, and planted with hundreds of subtropical and temperate-zone plants.
Here was stationed during the prosperous days of cinchona culture, nearly the whole botanical staff of the Department of Public Gardens and Plantations. For seven years, under Sir Daniel Morris (18791886), and eleven years under the Hon. William Fawcett (1886-1897), the staff was engaged in agricultural and in some purely botanical researches. Methods of propagating, cultivating, harvesting and curing cinchona, tea, etc., were studied. At a lower altitude experimental plantations were made of oranges, orris root, forage plants, and fiber plants such as China grass, which showed that these can be grown successfully in the Hills. The staff included a trained English gardener, William Nock, brought over to demonstrate the possibility of cultivating "English" vegetables in these higher parts of the island. This experiment was entirely successful, and in consequence the natives now grow these vegetables, then carry them as head loads for 15 or 20 miles over the mountain trails to the Kingston market. Besides these purely agricultural investigations, important taxonomic studies were made of
