Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Finest
Coffee-Plantations Are Now Found In The Savannah Of Ocumare, Near
Salamanca, And At Rincon, In The Mountainous Countries Of Los
Mariches, San Antonio Hatillo, And Los Budares.
The coffee of the
three last mentioned places, situated eastward of Caracas, is of a
superior quality; but the trees bear a smaller quantity, which is
attributed to the height of the spot and the coolness of the
climate.
The greater plantations of the province of Venezuela (as
Aguacates, near Valencia and Rincon) yield in good years a produce
of three thousand quintals.
The extreme predilection entertained in this province for the
culture of the coffee-tree is partly founded on the circumstance
that the berry can be preserved during a great number of years;
whereas, notwithstanding every possible care, cacao spoils in the
warehouses after ten or twelve months. During the long dissensions
of the European powers, at a time when Spain was too weak to
protect the commerce of her colonies, industry was directed in
preference to productions of which the sale was less urgent, and
could await the chances of political and commercial events. I
remarked that in the coffee-plantations the nurseries are formed
not so much by collecting together young plants, accidentally
rising under trees which have yielded a crop, as by exposing the
seeds of coffee to germination during five days, in heaps, between
plantain leaves. These seeds are taken out of the pulp, but yet
retaining a part of it adherent to them. When the seed has
germinated it is sown, and it produces plants capable of bearing
the heat of the sun better than those which spring up in the shade
in coffee-plantations. In this country five thousand three hundred
coffee-trees are generally planted in a fanega of ground, amounting
to five thousand four hundred and seventy-six square toises. This
land, if it be capable of artificial irrigation, costs five hundred
piastres in the northern part of the province. The coffee-tree
flowers only in the second year, and its flowering lasts only
twenty-four hours. At this time the shrub has a charming
appearance; and, when seen from afar, it appears covered with snow.
The produce of the third year becomes very abundant. In plantations
well weeded and watered, and recently cultivated, trees will bear
sixteen, eighteen, and even twenty pounds of coffee. In general,
however, more than a pound and a half or two pounds cannot be
expected from each plant; and even this is superior to the mean
produce of the West India Islands. The coffee trees suffer much
from rain at the time of flowering, as well as from the want of
water for artificial irrigation, and also from a parasitic plant, a
new species of loranthus, which clings to the branches. When, in
plantations of eighty or a hundred thousand shrubs, we consider the
immense quantity of organic matter contained in the pulpy berry of
the coffee-tree, we may be astonished that no attempts have been
made to extract a spirituous liquor from them.* (* The berries
heaped together produce a vinous fermentation, during which a very
pleasant alcoholic smell is emitted. Placing, at Caracas, the ripe
fruit of the coffee-tree under an inverted jar, quite filled with
water, and exposed to the rays of the sun, I remarked that no
extrication of gas took place in the first twenty-four hours. After
thirty-six hours the berries became brown, and yielded gas. A
thermometer, enclosed in the jar in contact with the fruit, kept at
night 4 or 5 degrees higher than the external air. In the space of
eighty-seven hours, sixty berries, under various jars, yielded me
from thirty-eight to forty cubic inches of a gas, which underwent
no sensible diminution with nitrous gas. Though a great quantity of
carbonic acid had been absorbed by the water as it was produced, I
still found 0.78 in the forty inches. The remainder, or 0.22, was
nitrogen. The carbonic acid had not been formed by the absorption
of the atmospheric oxygen. That which is evolved from the berries
of the coffee-tree slightly moistened, and placed in a phial with a
glass stopple filled with air, contains alcohol in suspension; like
the foul air which is formed in our cellars during the fermentation
of must. On agitating the gas in contact with water, the latter
acquires a decidedly alcoholic flavour. How many substances are
perhaps contained in a state of suspension in those mixtures of
carbonic acid and hydrogen, which are called deleterious miasmata,
and which rise everywhere within the tropics, in marshy grounds, on
the sea-shore, and in forests where the soil is strewed with dead
leaves, rotten fruits, and putrefying insects.)
If the troubles of St. Domingo, the temporary rise in the price of
colonial produce, and the emigration of French planters, were the
first causes of the establishment of coffee plantations on the
continent of America, in the island of Cuba, and in Jamaica; their
produce has far more than compensated the deficiency of the
exportation from the French West India Islands. This produce has
augmented in proportion to the population, the change of customs,
and the increasing luxury of the nations of Europe. The island of
St. Domingo exported, in 1700, at the time of Necker's
administration, nearly seventy-six million pounds of coffee.* (*
French pounds, containing 9216 grains. 112 English pounds = 105
French pounds; and 160 Spanish pounds = 93 French pounds. The
island of St. Domingo was at that time, it must be remembered, a
French colony.)
Tea could be cultivated as well as coffee in the mountainous parts
of the provinces of Caracas and Cumana. Every climate is there
found rising in stages one above another; and this new culture
would succeed there as well as in the southern hemisphere, where
the government of Brazil, protecting at the same time industry and
religious toleration, suffered at once the introduction of Chinese
tea and of the dogmas of Fo.
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