l62 COFFEE : ITS CULTIVATION AND PROFIT. 



Each worker carries a bag slung from his or her 

 shoulder, into which they stuff the coloured berries 

 with both hands as fast as picked. When the 

 wallet is full it is taken to the nearest roadway, 

 where stand the coolies' rows of receiving sacks, 

 each capable of holding a bushel or two bushels 

 of fruit. By the number of these journies the 

 workers estimate the quantity they have picked, 

 and mentally feel the pay in rupees growing heavy 

 in their cummerbunds. If there is plenty of crop, 

 each picker should collect three or perhaps three- 

 and-a-half bushels a-day, for which the pay is the 

 equivalent of fourpence per bushel. 



As the big sacks are filled, they are taken off to 

 the pulping sheds, and should be, if it can possibly 

 be managed, operated upon within a few hours, or 

 certainly the same day, as any delay may cause the 

 heaps of soft ripe fruit to ferment, discolouring the 

 inside parchment and depreciating the value of the 

 sample in Mincing Lane. It is, however, not in- 

 variably the rule to pulp at once. In Brazil, much 

 of the Coffee is purposely allowed to stand in sheds 

 for forty-eight hours, thereby- attaining a peculiar 

 odour that recommends it to South American 

 connoisseurs. Again, native and Dutch Coffee 

 is not pulped but hulled; instead of the soft 

 outside covering of flesh being removed by pulping 

 machinery, it is suffered to dry upon the beans, 

 and is subsequently operated upon by special 

 machinery which cracks off this dried husk. 



