SETTLEMENTS ON THE DEMERARY, &C. 173 



with Paramaribo, by establishing a ferry over the Courantine, 

 and expending labor on the present rude path, or by digging 

 a canal and establishing drag-schuyts, is a point of the utmost 

 importance to accelerate the improvement of all these colonies. 

 Paramaribo has long been populous ; the division of labor is 

 carried farther there than it can be in our newer towns ; many 

 of the arts of refinement and luxury are already practiced, and 

 would soon carry their accommodations along the road from 

 the metropolis. There is a redundant population, which 

 would come to the relief of our wants, and by setting at liberty 

 a part of the artificers, would supply new cultivators of the 

 ground. I exhort the administrative bodies to complete the 

 road from Stabroek through New Amsterdam to Paramaribo. 



In the Canje are several very fine estates, one of which I 

 visited, a coffee plantation that had been in cultivation forty 

 years. The coffee is a beautiful evergreen, which usually 

 rises to a height of nine or ten feet on a smooth grey stem five 

 or six inches diameter. The leaves resemble those of the bay- 

 tree ; the flowers those of the jessamin. When the white and 

 fragrant blossoms drop off, they leave a small fruit behind, 

 which is green at first, then red, and which contains two 

 seeds, or kernels, called coffee. The fruit is gathered by 

 shaking the tree, is received on mats and laid to dry in the 

 sun, after which operation the husk becomes suflficiently brittle 

 to be crushed with a wooden roller and separated by sifting. 



