lOO COST AND PROFIT. 



be had for these sums is a question that from the shifting 

 nature of prices, and the varieties of climates, soils and 

 situations, cannot be accurately answered, or with even an 

 approximation to accuracy. With regard to the profits 

 of coffee planting the investor may get a very large return, 

 a moderate or a small one, and he may even suffer, as many 

 who have tried it have done, a considerable loss. No 

 reliance whatever can be placed on the estimates so often 

 published, and though many of them may be accurate 

 enough as far as they go, assuming that everything goes 

 well, good soil, climate, cheap labor, good health, and good 

 seasons must be taken into account, in the brilliant reports 

 of the returns to be expected in the first few bearing years, 

 usually terminating with the assertion that " the profits 

 subsequently to be derived will be something fabulous." 

 Transport facilities are another important factor and de- 

 serving of much consideration. In many countries they 

 exceed the cost of growing and preparing the crops for 

 market, and it frequently occurs in the interior of Brazil, 

 Mexico and other countries, that it does not pay to for- 

 ward the coffee to the markets at the ports of shipment. 

 But whatever may be the ascertained advantages in 

 point of soil, temperature, moisture and situation, and 

 however bountiful may be the yield of the plants, the 

 speculation must always be estimated in connection with 

 the cost and vicissitudes with which coffee planting as a 

 business is unhappily associated. Anxiety must be in- 

 separable from an undertaking exclusively dependent on 

 native labor, and liable to be affected at the most critical 

 moment by its capricious commercial fluctuations. The 

 crops in most of the coffee-growing countries, when 

 saved on the plantation, has either to encounter the risk 

 incident to transportation by hand through mountain 

 districts as yet unopened by roads, or the chances of 



