JAVA COFFEES. 131 



that, together with the other constant and heavy 

 demands made upon them by the government authority 

 on the native labor of the country, that they deprived 

 the unfortunate peasants of the time necessary to raise 

 food for their own support, many thus perishing by 

 famine, while others fled to the mountains, where, rais- 

 ing a scanty subsistence in patches, or often dependent 

 for it upon the roots of the forest, they congratulated 

 themselves on their escape from the reach of their 

 oppressors ; numbers of these people, with their descend- 

 ants, remaining in these haunts to the present time. In 

 their annual migrations they frequently pass over the 

 richest lands, which still remain uncultivated, awaiting 

 their return to till it, but they prefer their wild independ- 

 ence and precarious subsistence to the horrors of being 

 again subjected to forced servitude and forced deliveries 

 at inadequate compensation. 



In the Java highlands the tree yields fruit for a period 

 of twenty years, while on the plains or lowlands it seldom 

 attains a greater age than nine or ten, bearing only dur- 

 ing six or seven of these, the fruit being larger compara- 

 tively, but the flavor less as a general rule. About the end 

 of the rainy season such plants as have not thriven are 

 replaced by others and the plantations cleared, this latter 

 operation in well-managed plantations being generally 

 performed from three to four times in the year, the tree 

 being never topped or pruned, but universally allowed to 

 grow in all its native luxuriance. In this state it often, in 

 favored situations, reaches a height of sixteen feet, and 

 plants eight inches broad have been frequently procured 

 from the trunks. The average product of a coffee tree in 

 Java is not estimated at much more than i^ pounds, 

 but there are instances on record where as much as from 

 twenty to thirty pounds have been yielded by a single 



