and which must give the coffee a more delicate flavor.  A tree will yield each time on an average from 1 lb. to 11/2 lb. of coffee, when pulped and perfectly dried.  An acre of land planted with coffee, when favored by the weather, becomes more profitable than when it is planted with sugar canes; but its crops are always very precarious, as the blossoms, and even the berries, are sometimes damaged by the heavy rains, which are much less injurious to sugar canes; wherefore a planter feels himself best secured in his revenue, as soon as he can cultivate them both.

Nothing can exceed the beauty of the walks planted with coffee trees, from their pyramidical shape and from their glossy dark green leaves, shining with great brightness, amongst which are hanging the scarlet-coloured berries.  Mr. Baird, in his “Impressions of the West Indies,” thus speaks of a coffee plantation:—­

“Anything in the way of cultivation more beautiful, or more fragrant, than a coffee plantation, I had not conceived; and oft did I say to myself, that if ever I became, from health and otherwise, a cultivator of the soil within the tropics, I would cultivate the coffee plant, even though I did so irrespective altogether of the profit that might be derived from so doing.  Much has been written, and not without justice, of the rich fragrance of an orange grove; and at home we ofttimes hear of the sweet odors of a bean-field.  I have, too, often enjoyed in the Carse of Stirling, and elsewhere in Scotland, the balmy breezes as they swept over the latter, particularly when the sun had burst out, with unusual strength, after a shower of rain.  I have likewise, in Martinique, Santa Cruz, Jamaica, and Cuba, inhaled the gales wafted from the orangeries; but not for a moment would I compare either with the exquisite aromatic odors from a coffee plantation in full blow, when the hill-side—­covered over with regular rows of the tree-like shrub, with their millions of jessamine-like flowers—­showers down upon you, as you ride up between the plants, a perfume of the most delicately delicious description.  ’Tis worth going to the West Indies to see the sight and inhale the perfume.”

The decline in the quantities of coffee drawn from the “West Indies to supply the great demand, is manifest in the following summary of imports from those islands:—­

lbs. 
In 1828 they exported about 30,000,000
1831 the imports from British West Indies were 20,017,623
1841 Ditto Ditto 9,904,230
1850, the last year in which distinct accounts 4,262,225
were kept
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Decrease from 1831 15,755,398