These Are The Usual Conditions Of Success In Most
Affairs; But A Coffee-Estate Is Not Unfrequently Abused For Not
Paying When It Is Worked With Borrowed Capital At A High Rate Of
Interest Under Questionable Superintendence.
It is a difficult thing to define the amount which constitutes a
"fortune:" that which is enough for one man is a pittance for
another; but one thing is certain, that, no matter how small his
first capital, the coffee-planter hopes to make his "fortune."
Now, even allowing a net profit of twenty per cent. per annum on
the capital invested, it must take at least ten years to add
double the amount to the first capital, allowing no increase to
the spare capital required for working the estate. A rapid
fortune can never be made by working a coffee estate. Years of
patient industry and toil, chequered by many disappointments, may
eventually reward the proprietor; but it will be at a time of
life when a long residence in the tropics will have given him a
distaste for the chilly atmosphere of old England; his early
friends will have been scattered abroad, and he will meet few
faces to welcome him on his native shores. What cold is so
severe as a cold reception? - no thermometer can mark the degree.
No fortune, however large, can compensate for the loss of home,
and friends, and early associations.
This feeling is peculiarly strong throughout the British nation.
You cannot convince an English settler that he will be abroad for
an indefinite number of years; the idea would be equivalent to
transportation:
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