In proportion to the dryness of the weather, from one to two months are required to dry the coffee fully.  In drying inside the houses, the greatest care must be taken to prevent heating the coffee; this is the great object of the West Indian system, as such heating is very prejudicial.  On this account the huts in which the platforms are placed must be very airy, so that the wind may have good play among the trays, on which the coffee must be thinly spread and frequently turned.

Pounding.—­Coffee in the pulp, as well as that in the parchment, must, before being pounded, be exposed for some hours to the sun to make it crisp and hard; but it must be allowed to cool again before the pounding begins, or the beans will be liable to be broken.

The pounding is done in small baskets of a conical form, two feet high, at the top eighteen inches in diameter, and at the bottom one foot.  These baskets are, up to one-third of their height, thickly woven round with coir, and fastened on the ground between four thick bamboo poles, and with the bottom half an inch in the ground itself.  The coffee is pounded by small quantities at a time with light, wooden pestles; the baskets must not be more than half full.  When the coffee is sufficiently pounded, the basket is lifted from between the poles and the beans are thrown into sieves, on which it is cleaned from skin, and white, black, or broken beans.  According to the West Indian system, the coffee must now be instantly put in bags, to preserve its greenish colour, which is very peculiar.  If the green coffee is not instantly sent to the packing stores to be bagged, it must be put up in a very dry place, and be turned over once every day, to prevent heating, which damps and discolors the berry.

Coffee is grown to some extent in Celebes—­the average crop being from 10,000 to 12,000 piculs of 133 English pounds.  The production has rather fallen off than increased during the last few years.  The whole of the coffee grown must be delivered by the inhabitants to the government exclusively, at twelve copper florins per picul.  It is much prized in the Netherlands, and maintains a higher price in the market than the best Java coffee.  As the treatment of the product in Java differs wholly from that which is in vogue in Celebes, and this, in our eyes, is much inferior, I know not whether the higher price is ascribable to the name, or to an intrinsic superiority in quality.  It is certain that this cultivation is susceptible of much improvement, and might be advanced to a much higher condition.

From tables given by M. Spreeuwenberg ("Journal of the Indian Archipelago,” vol. ii. p. 829) of the quantity of coffee delivered from each district of this island, for the years 1838 to 1842, it appears that the average annual delivery of coffee was 1,288,118 lbs.

Of the production of Sumatra I have no details, but a very fair proportion is grown there—­about five million pounds.