INTRODUCTION INTO AMERICA. 29 



while from Martinique it was first introduced into 

 Jamaica by Sir Nicholas Lawes in 1732, a special act of 

 Parliament being passed in that year to encourage and 

 foster its cultivation on that island. Coffee culture is 

 claimed to have been first introduced into San Domingo 

 by wild fowl who carried the seeds in their craws from 

 one of the neighboring islands about 1735, being later 

 introduced to the smaller islands of the Antilles by the 

 French themselves. 



The Spaniards procured some plants from Martinique, 

 and undertook its cultivation in Cuba, Porto Rico and 

 others of their possessions in the West Indies about 1750, 

 its culture prospering well in these islands until replaced 

 later by the less expensive and more profitable sugar 

 industry, but it was not until 1784 that they undertook 

 its cultivation in their possessions on the mainland. In 

 that year Bartholemew Blandin started a plantation in the 

 Chacao valley, situated about a league from the now 

 famous coffee-growing district of Caracas, a Dr. Sligo, soon 

 afterwards, following Blandin's example in the equally 

 famous district of Maracaibo, the new branch of industry 

 being soon generally adopted throughout Venezuela, 

 Columbo, Ecuador and Bolivia, where several varieties 

 are grown, particularly throughout the Yungas district, 

 the best product being valued as not inferior to the far- 

 famed Mocha itself. 



In 1 8 18 the profitableness of coffee culture in the West 

 Indies led to the establishment of extensive plantations in 

 Mexico in the cantons of Orizaba and Cordova, which 

 in 1825 were in a most flourishing state, its cultivation 

 in that country being still further extended to the valleys 

 of the interior, in 1826 there being in Cuentla and 

 Cuenmarca alone estates containing as many as 500,000 

 coffee trees. Elsewhere in Mexico at the time much 



