CULTIVATION OF COFFEE IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES. 63 



Porto Rico, and other sugar-producing countries. It is to be 

 observed that while the cultivation of sugar was declining in 

 Brazil, and coffee increasing and superseding it, in Cuba 

 coffee was falling off rapidly and sugar annually increasing. 

 We now find at the present time that there is hardly enough 

 coffee raised in Cuba to supply the consumptive demand, 

 and the importation of Java and Rio coffees has been found 

 necessary to supply the increasing w^ants of the inhabitants of 

 one of the principal producing countries of former times. It 

 was not, however, until after the Haytian insurrection that coffee 

 became an object of great cultivation and commerce in Brazil. 

 In 1809 the first cargo, consisting of 1522 bags, was sent to 

 Salem, in the United States, per ship Marquis de Someruelas, 

 and all the coffee raised in the empire in that year scarcely 

 amounted to 30,000 sacks, while in the Brazilian financial year 

 of 1871 there were exported over two million sacks. 



The great importance which coffee has acquired of late years 

 as a staple of commerce, very naturally suggests the inquiry as 

 to the best means of still further promoting its culture. Since 

 the sugar plantations of the West Indies have so largely super- 

 seded those of coffee, attention has been directed to other geo- 

 graphical points suited to its growth. Until the era of the 

 French revolution, the cultivation of coffee could scarcely be 

 said to have reached the South American continent ; till then 

 it was in a great measure confined to Arabia and the Caribbean 

 Archipelago. Its extreme scarcity during the Napoleonic wars 

 enhanced its price so enormously, that on the first announce- 

 ment of peace, in 1814, many coffee-plantations were formed on 

 the Costa Firme of South America, along the Brazilian shores 

 of that continent, and even on the southern coast of Africa. 

 "Not content, however, with the natural increase of the demand 

 now so universally made for this important berry, France, 

 England, and America seem to have entered into a friendly al- 



