34 TIMEHRI. 
convenience of picking, they bear in the fourth year, and 
are in full crop in the sixth. In well grained and rich 
land they will last 30 years. The bean of the young 
trees is the largest and coarsest, that of old trees is small, 
with a great proportion of what is called barley coffee. 
and is of a superior quality. In the pegass lands of 
the Canals, the coffee tree grows to twice the size it 
does on the Coast, and its produce is much more abun- 
dant, but the bean is larger and the quality not so fine. 
Sugar, now the only hope of the planter, has swallowed 
up all the other cultivations, and cotton, coffee, cacao, 
with every minor produétion have disappeared before it. 
A field to be prepared for sugar must be first carefully 
levelled, spaces are then marked off of 3 and 24 feet 
alternately from the first space, a shovelfull of ground is 
dug and piled up one on the second, so as to make a 
bank and shallow trench across the bed, this process is 
called cane holing, 
The space between each bank is now dug up for 6 or 
8 inches, loosened and broken small by the shovel, or 
hoe, this is called shovel or hoe ploughing. 
_ The ground is now left for a few weeks to pulverise by 
the aétion of the sun and rain. 
A negro is supposed to dig 12 feet square of a draining 
trench 5 feet deep in a day, 264 feet of a small drain, 
and to cane-hole 160 yards, each of which he is found 
to perform with ease under common circumstances be- 
between the hours of 6 o’clock and 3. 
Six negroes will weed an acre of coffee and plantains 
in a day where the ground is well covered with grass. 
Four or five negroes are required to an acre of canes, 
being 6 weeks after the spring the first weeding, 
