Chapter VI. 
'■f 
Coffee Picking and Cherry. — ^Floors, Walls and 
Roofs. 
As Mr. Brown and his conductor were waiting for 
the arrival of the coolies for morning muster, they 
were having some small talk inside the store. It 
was the latter end of October. The north-east mon- 
soon had set in ; it was cold, and a damp mist was 
driving through the gullies on the mountain rang# 
behind. They ought to pick two bushels now,” 
says the master, ** there is plenty of ripe coffee, 
but it is a bad day for making a trial of it.** * ‘There 
is plenty of rip© coffee, echoes the conductor, “ I * li 
make them do it. ” So, when the names were called, 
jliaeks and kutti sacks were issued to extra pickers ; 
k^yt was a cas'^ol" “ all hands to pick.*’ “Now,” saj^s 
^ ^the master — “Now,” echoes the conductor — “if 
you don’t bring in two bushels yon will be put 
" .absent, mind that, and no mistake. Bring in one 
bushel at eleven o’clock and another at four. Off 
with you.” So off they go running singly, or in twos 
and threes, here, there, and everywliere, and in a few^ 
minutes nobody was to be seen. The system as at 
present practised of strictly picking in line regularly 
all over the estate wag not in use. It was consi- 
dered an expensive way of gathering, for did they not 
bring in far more coffee into the cherry-loft 
when allowed to pick where they liked ? Talk 
of heavy work in crop-time ! Why, it wag 
the easiest time of the year. The coolies were tasked 
in the morning as to the amount of coffee they were 
expected to bring in, and the remainder of the day 
was spent about the store and pulping-house. The con- 
ductor in the afternoon would give a statement of the 
progress of picking, where there was ripe coffee and where 
there was not, where there wa# lots of green coffee 
and when it was likely to be ripe. But he said 
nothing about bad picking or the quanti’ y lost, strewed 
on the roads, lying under the trees, or left to dry 
on the trees. There must have been an immense 
quantity of coffee lost in those times, not from want 
of labour, but from bad picking and a total want of 
all method in carrying on the work, and simply from 
the fact that more attention was devoted to the 
amount of cherry picked per man, than to the pick- 
ing of the crop. If, at four o’clock, a man’s bushel 
was a measure or so short, h© was ordered out to 
make up the deficiency : he went where he liked, 
made a grab at a branch, stripped it, ripe, half -ripe, 
and green ^ knowing that he would be checked for 
