AmAu^'i892arm'}      Cultivation  of  Coffee  in  Jamaica.  397 
interior  of  the  island,  a  couple  of  weeks  before  Christmas,  having 
been  told  that  the  coffee  berries  were  then  ripe,  I  kept  a  sharp  out- 
look for  the  coffee  trees,  but  saw  nothing  that  I  could  take  for  them. 
On  arriving  at  the  station,  I  walked  along  the  single  road  or  street 
of  the  little  village  of  negro  huts,  and  chancing  to  stop  by  the  side 
of  a  copse  of  tangled  bushes  which  I  took  for  a  wild  growth,  I 
noticed  a  few  coffee  berries  on  the  ground  under  the  bushes,  and  on 
investigating  found  that  these  bushes  were  coffee  shrubs.  I  tried 
to  think  of  what  they  reminded  me  at  home,  and  nothing  conveys 
to  my  mind  a  closer  comparison  than  a  tangled  undergrowth  of 
Wahoo  shrubs. 
The  bulk  of  the  coffee  of  Jamaica  is  raised  by  small  growers — 
negroes,  who  own  from  a  half  to  five  acres  of  ground,  and  who  plant 
the  shrub  around  the  place  without  any  order  or  system  whatever, 
and  apparently  give  the  shrub  no  attention,  excepting  to  break  off 
occasionally  the  tops  when  they  get  too  high  or  to  cut  off  a  few 
dead  branches.  In  the  statistics  of  the  island,  where  the  estates  are 
specified  which  raise  fifty  acres  or  more  of  coffee,  only  thirty  estates 
are  named,  comprising  about  3,000  acres,  while  the  acreage  of  small 
holders,  less  than  fifty  acres,  is  nearly  18,000.  These  small  growers, 
of  course,  for  the  most  part  have  no  machinery  for  preparing  or 
sorting  the  coffee.  Almost  every  negro  hut  in  the  coffee  districts 
has  in  the  yard  what  they  call  a  "  barbicue."  It  is  aflat  drying  sur- 
face, built  where  the  sun  will  strike  it,  and  reminds  one  of  a  square 
tray  on  a  large  scale,  built  of  brick  with  raised  edges  and  cemented 
smooth.  The  usual  size  is  from  twelve  to  twenty  feet  square.  The 
negroes  gather  the  coffee  berries  when  they  get  ripe,  a  few  each 
week,  somewhat  like  we  would  pick  gooseberries,  one  at  a  time. 
They  put  the  berries  into  a  wooden  mortar  and  beat  them,  which 
separates  the  outer  skins,  which  are  washed  away  in  buckets  of 
water.  The  seeds  are  then  put  on  the  "  barbicue  "  to  dry.  With- 
out a  close  examination  at  this  stage  the  product  resembles  large 
grains  of  coffee  mixed  with  the  imperfectly  separated  outer  skins, 
but  on  closer  observation  we  notice  that  each  grain  of  coffee  is 
enclosed  in  a  thick,  tough,  cartilaginous  skin.    When  the  coffee  has 
size  of  the  coffee  tree,  but  also  to  the  size,  shape,  color,  and  cluster  of  the  ber- 
ries, that  it  is  a  discredit  to  that  otherwise  very  excellent  work.  A  good 
illustration  of  a  coffee  branch  is  plate  106  of  the  German  work  just  completed, 
"  Kohler's  Medicinal-Pflanzen  Atlas." 
