368 Coffee Culture on tbe Soutbern Coast of Cbiapas. 



You know very well that my letter was not written for publication, and that I 

 only consented to its insertion in your paper after your solicitation, and because I 

 supposed that the discussion of this important subject would do some good to the 

 public at large, and especially to the coffee and India-rubber industries in Mexico. 

 Far from having any intention detrimental to any of those industries, my well-known 

 interest in both of them made me write my letter, as I think I am the originator and 

 promoter of India-rubber planting in Mexico, and I have given a great deal of my 

 time at least two consecutive years to coffee-culture, having started myself a coffee 

 and an India-rubber plantation in the State of Chiapas, in southeastern Mexico. 



Perhaps I was too sweeping in my remarks about coffee-planting in the Isthmus 

 of Tehuantepec, due to the fact that my official duties at this capital leave me very 

 little time to consider carefully and maturely other subjects, and that my letter to you 

 was for that reason written in great haste. What I meant to say, because I am con- 

 vinced of it by experience and study, is that hot lands are not the best for coffee, and 

 that as a general rule low lands are hot, and in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec lands are 

 low. As Mr. Harriman says the highest elevation is only 900 feet above the level ot 

 the sea, I concluded that they could not be the best lands for coffee. 



But Mr. Harriman states in his last letter that the lands on the isthmus are not 

 hot, and as he knows them well and I have only passed through some of them, never 

 having been at Jaltipan, his lands may be very good and perhaps the best for coffee, 

 and I sincerely hope they are so, as I have the best wishes for his success, as well as 

 for the success of anybody else who would contribute to the development of the coffee 

 industry in Mexico, which I think is one of the greatest sources of wealth in that 

 country. 



As is well known, the temperature of a place depends on several factors, the 

 principal one being its elevation above the level of the sea ; but this factor may be 

 affected or even changed by others, like the currents of air, dampness, etc. The at- 

 mospheric conditions of Jaltipan, as described by Mr. Harriman, doubtless may give 

 that place, located 900 feet above the sea-level, a temperature corresponding in other 

 localities to a much higher elevation (say from 5000 to 5 500 feet), which I think is the 

 best location for coffee-culture. I am sure, too, that the great currents of air passing 

 through the isthmus of Tehuantepec, which Mr. Harriman describes so well, and 

 which I have experienced while passing through that isthmus, will dry the land, and 

 may make it necessary to use shade for the coffee-trees when they are young and when 

 most of the surface of the land would be exposed to the winds ; but even in that case 

 I should think that when the coffee-trees are grown, and they shade the ground with 

 their own leaves, the yield of the plantation per tree would be increased by pulling 

 down the shade-trees. 



I am still firmly of the opinion that as a general rule, recognizing of course that 

 there may be exceptions to the rule itself, but not to its principle, coffee is the product 

 of temperate and not of hot climates, and that it is better therefore to plant it high 

 rather than low. Mr. Taylor's quotation of Mr. Hugo Finck's opinion, quoted by 

 Mr. F. O. Harriman, to the effect that coffee-trees need shade when planted below 

 from 3000 to 3500 feet, and do not need it when planted higher, I rather think con- 

 firms my theory. 



I have also read Mr. J. P. Harriman's letter, dated at Woonsocket, R. I., No- 

 vember gth, published in the same issue of your journal, commenting on my previous 

 communication on this subject. My remarks already made to the other letter will 

 answer his, and I will only add that if coffee-trees yield in Jaltipan or around there 

 3^ pounds per tree, as he says they average at the Pena Blanca plantations, I would 

 not hesitate in saying that the isthmus lands are the best in the world for coffee- 

 raising, as what I consider the best lands in Mexico for that industry do not average 



