We want population to eat our
produce, and then there will be no complaint.
In the case of coffee a plentiful supply of cheap labour is essential to
success. Those who by judicious treatment of the aboriginals command
their services have so far made profit. A coffee plantation suggests
pleasant, picturesque and spicy things. The orderly lines of the plants,
in glossy green adorned for a brief space with white, frail, fugitive
flowers distilling a deliciously sweet and grateful odour, the branches
crowded with gleaming berries, green, pink and red, present pleasing
aspect. As a change to the scenery of the jungle, a coffee estate has a
garden-like relief. But picking berry by berry is slow and monotonous
work, vexatious, too, to those mortals whose skin is sensitive to the
attacks of green ants. Then comes the various processes of the removal of
the pulp, first by machinery, finally by the fermentation of the still
adhering slimy residuum; then the drying and saving by exposure to the
sun on trays or on tarpaulins until all moisture is expelled; and the
hulling which disintegrates the parchment from the twin berries; then
winnowing, and finally the polishing.
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