130 JAVA COFFEES. 



conducted under the immediate superintendence of the 

 government officials, who select the sites where the new 

 plantations are to be formed, seeing that they are pre- 

 served from weeds and rank grasses and overseeing its 

 selection and removal to the "go-downs" or warehouses 

 when prepared. Under this system the Sunda districts are 

 estimated to yield an annual produce of 100,000 piculs, and 

 it was at one time calculated that the young plantations of 

 the eastern districts, when they should come into full bear- 

 ing, would produce an equal quantity, but in the latter 

 section many of the plantations had been formed on ill- 

 judged sites, the natives being also averse to the new 

 and additional burden which this increase of cultivation 

 imposed upon their labor. Had the system been per- 

 severed in or enforced by a despotic authority, it is 

 questionable whether the quantity anticipated in the 

 above estimate, or even one-half of it, would have been 

 obtained from the eastern districts. The Sundas living 

 in an island and mountainous country, and having been 

 long accustomed to the hardships of coffee culture, are 

 less sensible of its pressure than the rest of their coun- 

 trymen, time and habit having reconciled them to a sys- 

 tem of servitude, which was at first revolting to them, 

 and a state of slavery, which the philanthropist laments 

 as degrading, is scarcely felt to be even a grievance by 

 themselves. Instances, however, are not wanting in 

 which the usual measure of exaction having been sur- 

 passed they have been awakened to a sense of their 

 wretchedness, a government of colonial monopolists, 

 eager only for profit, and heedless of the sources from 

 which it is derived, subjecting its native subjects to priva- 

 tions and distresses, the recital of which shock the ear 

 of humanity. In brief, the system of coffee culture in 

 the island of Java has sometimes been so severely exacted 



