AGRICULTURE IN 1820. 267 
propagation and continuation of their numbers, are daily 
decreasing in efficiency and numerical strength. It follows 
therefore that during the liquidation of a heavy mortgage, 
the instalment of the latter years will be paid off by an 
accession of labour exa€éted from adecreasing gang. This 
there is no means of preventing, because the debt must 
be paid, and the Merchant cannot, from the exorbitant 
price of negroes in the colony, increase his loan by 
supplying the deficiencies. There is no doubt that the ad- 
vantages of this colony over the Islands with regard to the 
food and comforts of the negroes, should, in point of mere 
humanity, direét the transmutation of the slave population 
from those of the islands that are barely fertile enough 
to support them. And the purest spirit of policy as well 
as philanthropy di€tates at this time that we import new 
island negroes to plant new lands. 
COFFEE. 
The cultivation of coffee is simple and much in favor 
of the health and comfort of the negroes. It is generally 
planted in rows at 8 or to feet distance, with interme- 
diate rows of plantains. The young coffee tree will not 
grow in these latitudes except shaded from the scorching 
rays of the meridian sun, and the broad leaf of the plan- 
tain or banana is found best calculated for this, whilst 
it ensures a constant supply of nutritious food for the 
gang employed in its cultivation. Anacre of coffee of 700 
trees will yield in average fair seasons $300 of Coffee 
and often more, The plantains will also yield 400 
ounches, making the whole produce worth near $400 per 
annum. An able negro can with ease keep 3 or.4 acres of 
this cultivation in excellent order. It is not therefore 
without reason that the old Dutch colonists, who were 
MM 
