86 



To the River Plate and Back 



ful sight. The blossoms are succeeded by the berries, 

 which, when ripe, are bright red. Each berry contains 

 two seeds, or "beans," which are placed in the shell 

 with their flat sides face to face. The gathering and 

 hulling of the coffee employs a great many people in the 

 season. The trees are pruned back, or pollarded, to en- 



Fig. 8. Coffee in bloom. Fig. 9. Coffee in fruit. 



From drawings made by the mother of the writer in Jamaica, West 

 Indies, 1846. 



able the pickers to reach the branches. Little cultiva- 

 tion is required, except to weed the ground in which the 

 trees grow and keep it mulched with rotten leaves and 

 vegetable compost. In a coffee-plantation the shrubs 

 are set out quite thickly, about five hundred to the acre. 

 There are hundreds of thousands of acres planted with 

 coffee in Santos, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and the ad- 

 jacent provinces. The cultivation has grown to such an 

 extent that there has been a decline in prices, which the 

 Brazilians have sought in part to overcome by restricting 



