172 BRAZILIAN COFFEES. 



Java, and in 1722 De la Motte, the French Governor of the 

 adjoining colony of Cayenne, having business in Surinam, 

 contrived by an artifice to bring away with him from there 

 a small coffee plant, which in 1725 had produced many 

 thousands which were distributed among all the French 

 colonies on the mainland, its propagation extending to 

 Para in 1732, the first coffee plantation formed in Brazil 

 being commenced in that province a few years later. Its 

 cultivation, however, made but little progress there until 

 about 1767, when its cultivation was still further extended 

 to the province of Maranhao, where it soon increased 

 rapidly under a more careful and systematic management. 

 In 1774 a Belgian monk named Molke procured some 

 coffee plants from a prosperous plantation in Maranhao, 

 which had previously been obtained from Surinam, and 

 planted them in the garden of the Capucin monastery of 

 Adjuda, then situated in what is now the centre of the 

 city of Rio de Janeiro. The plants prospered so well, 

 and he becoming convinced of their importance as a 

 valuable acquisition to the industries of the country that 

 he established a plantation in the vicinity for its more 

 systematic cultivation. Joachim Bruneo, the then 

 Bishop of Rio de Janeiro, perceiving the valuable bene- 

 fits that would result from its more extensive cultivation, 

 distributed seeds and plants raised on Molke's plantation 

 among the religious institutions and planters of the coun- 

 try, recommending and encouraging its cultivation among 

 them, but it was not until 1800 that Brazilian coffee 

 came to be so highly valued in the markets of the world. 

 In that year a planter named Dr. Lecesne, expelled by 

 the revolution from San Domingo, settled near Rio and 

 introduced the latest improved methods of cultivating 

 the coffee plant into that country. From these simple 

 and unostentatious beginnings has grown the now 



