Vol. LVI. No. 2485. 
NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 11, 1897. 
*1.00 PER YEAR. 
[“A CUP OF COFFEE.” 
11 B-R-o’w N BERRY” FARMING IN NICARAGUA. 
Another Side of American Agriculture. 
“ Do you like this coffee, papa ? ” 
“Yes, indeed! It is good. Why?” 
“ I’m so glad you like it, because I made it myself.” 
“Did you, my dear girl ? It is a credit to a house¬ 
keeper of 16. Tell me how you did it, and perhaps 
I’ll tell you then how this very coffee was made by 
people, several people, I know.” 
“ Do you mean these very berries that I roasted and 
ground a little while ago ? ” 
“ The very berries from which came the beans you 
roasted and ground. Coffee berries look quite like 
ox-heart cherries, and their seeds are like beans.” 
“ Oh, yes, they are like beans, and aren’t a bit like 
berries, yet 
folks call them 
berries. Tell 
us about how 
those people 
made this cof¬ 
fee. I’ll give 
you an extra 
cup if you tell 
us, and you 
know you al¬ 
ways want an 
extra cup for 
dinner.” 
“It’s a bar¬ 
gain ! I’ll be¬ 
gin at the very 
beginning o f 
this very coffee, 
for I saw it 
picked in Nica- 
ragua, last 
February. In 
the first place, 
a number of 
m o z o s—farm¬ 
ers in this coun¬ 
try would call 
them hired 
men—cut down 
all the vines 
and grass, 
bushes and 
young trees on 
a level spot in 
the barranca or 
ravine which is 
called El Taca- 
niste, because 
thousands o f 
little bees of 
that name 
swarm there to gather honey from the flowers that 
brighten and sweeten all of that narrow valley. The 
tall trees were left standing, that they might keep 
the hot glare of the midday sun from scorching the 
glossy leaves of the coffee plants. 
“Then some of the men dug up the brown earth with 
queer things that were shaped more like chisels with 
tremendously long handles than like spades. Others 
stirred the ground deeply with the broad blades of 
the same machetes they had used in cutting down the 
brush. When the soil had been loosened and most of 
the roots taken out of that little plot, the men drew 
with their machetes little furrows from one end to 
the other of the cleared ground, and women followed 
and dropped coffee beans in the furrows, and covered 
them by a deft movement of their bare feet. Then 
those women went away, and the men kept on cutting 
down the underbrush from the forest which covered 
all the slopes of that] ravine. And showers came in 
the cool nights, and the sun rose late and warmly 
smiled down on that little clearing. 
“ 1 Twas only a day or two before those beans were 
thrust bodily up out of the ground, and held up in the 
light of day by slim, pale little fellows that looked 
too thin and weak to hold themselves erect, to say 
nothing of supporting such heavy burdens. Mayhap 
they became tired of their loads ; at any rate, they 
soon dropped them, and took to stretching themselves 
toward the thin tree tops, away up between them 
and the blue sky, where fleecy clouds raced before 
the never-ceasing northeast trade wind. So, when 
the next rainy season came, they were sturdy little 
fellows, two feet high or more, and quite ready to 
stand by themselves under those giant trees. 
“Through all the year, men had been swinging 
those sword like machetes under those trees, and 
one could now see far up the aisles, to the very edge 
of the level top of the ridges which shut El Tacaniste 
from other barrancas on either side. When the first 
thin showers told that a. new season of rains was at 
hand, men and women carefully took those little sol¬ 
diers from the ranks and set them, eight feet apart, 
in rows that run from the brook in the bottom of the 
ravine to the top of the slopes, and those rows cover 
nearly or quite three miles of the sides of that bar¬ 
ranca, so that a great army of those young soldiers 
were left there to fight for life and success. You 
may see what the forest looked like in Fig. 252. Not 
that the struggle was hard ; there were few enemies, 
none in fact, except a few worms of the kind that 
live where rotting wood is on or in the ground, and 
cut off the roots of a few tender coffee plants, and 
the 1 ojo de gallo ’ or ‘ eye of the chicken ’ that spots 
the leaves in plantations where weeds'and-bushes, 
grass and vines are not kept from growing, and shut 
light and the cool breezes from the coffee. 
“ So it came that, when those trees were no more 
than four years old, some of those shrubs bore scores 
of snowy blossoms, every one of them a star of five 
points. The whole woods were as fragrant as an 
orange grove in bloom. And a few weeks later, 
pretty little gray squirrels came and gnawed the 
pulp from the ripei berries, and parrots big and par¬ 
rots little, and other birds which you do not know by 
sight, by song, or even by name, feasted on that ripe 
fruit, which did not taste at all badly. Nobody 
troubled those visitors. They carried away few 
seeds, so did little harm, and they did good by gather¬ 
ing whatever worms may have been in the cafetal, 
and other insects, none of which hurt coffee, but may 
doinjury to 
other things. 
Women came 
and picked 
those berries, 
and filled the 
little baskets, 
which hold 2% 
pounds. When 
a picker had 
filled her 
basket with 
berries, she 
emptied it into 
a sack nearby ; 
and when there 
were 40 basket- 
fuls or 100 
pounds in the 
sack, a man 
tied it and put 
it,with another 
like it to bal¬ 
ance, on the 
back of a mule 
which sedately 
marched away 
without a 
driver to th e 
patio or drying 
ground. 
“The women 
are paid a cent 
a pound for 
picking; and 
one can pick 12 
to 15 medios a 
day, if the har¬ 
vest is good, 
but if it is poor, 
8 to 10 medios 
or basketfuls is 
a good task for a day on this plantation.” 
“ So they work all day for 20 to 36 cents! Poor 
things ! Is that all they get ? ” 
“ No, indeed ! They get food and lodging—two or 
three tortillas de maiz—I mean pancakes of corn 
meal, every day; or rice and beans with a spoonful 
of lard; or, maybe, a few ounces of beef or pork. 
And they have all the bananas they will eat, and you 
know that bananas are to millions of people what 
bread is to us, or potatoes are supposed to be to the 
Irish. In fact, the chemist says that they are almost 
exactly equal to potatoes. Every planter raises 
bananas, partly to shade his coffee, but mainly to 
feed his laborers. Sometimes cheese is given to change 
the diet. 
“ These berries were spread on a great level floor 
of cement, which is like an immense stone resting in 
the hillside. There wind and sun dried them awhile, 
SCENE ON A COFFEE PLANTATION, SHOWING HELPERS AND BANANA TREES. Fig. 250. 
