134 JAVA COFFEES. 



of shipment, the natives being allowed but a small per- 

 centage of the crop as compensation for their labor in 

 many instances, but more generally the government plac- 

 ing a figure so low as to enable it to sell the coffee at an 

 enormous profit, and also deducting again a heavy duty 

 from the gross price paid to the growers, thereby deriv- 

 ing an almost fabulous revenue from this system of 

 cultivation. 



It is dif^cult to state what recompense the native 

 cultivator of coffee receives in Java for his services and 

 his product, the complicated system of accounts which 

 prevails there seem only calculated to puzzle or mystify 

 the investigator and allow the Dutch commissary to 

 derive an income of from eighty to one hundred thousand 

 dollars per annum at the expense of the government by 

 whom he is employed, on the one hand, and that of the 

 natives whom he oppresses, on the other. Latterly, 

 however, it has been directed that the cultivators should 

 receive, on delivery at the government storehouses, 

 " three rix-doUars (copper) for each " mountain " picul (225 

 pounds) of coffee, being very little more than one dollar 

 per hundred, while this same coffee has frequently been 

 sold in Batavia, within fifty miles of the spot where it 

 was raised, at twenty dollars per hundred, and has been 

 seldom sold in the European or American markets at less 

 than twenty cents per pound. It is, also, difBcult to fix 

 the exact rate at which the coffee might be produced 

 under the free system, but that it can be raised for 

 exportation at ten dollars per hundred with profit is 

 beyond doubt. The price paid the natives, however, is 

 deemed liberal by the Dutch government, though in 

 many cases it has to be transported over sixty miles of 

 an almost impassible country, where two men are required 

 to carry a hundred pounds of coffee on their shoulders 



