Page:Mexico in 1827 Vol 1.djvu/99

Rh of which were in full produce when I saw them in 1826. The crop of the preceding year amounted to five thousand Arrobas, or 125,000lbs., which gives two and a half pounds of coffee as the average produce of each plant, I am induced to believe that this will be the ordinary produce of good land throughout Mexico: it considerably exceeds that of the Havanna, where Humboldt gives 860 kilogrammes as the average of a hectare of land, containing 3500 plants; but it is a much lower estimate than any Mexican planter would make, as, in many parts of the country, from three to four pounds are said to be a fair average crop. I could not ascertain, however, that this calculation was founded upon correct data; and I do not, therefore, give it as one that may be strictly relied upon: but I know one instance, of a single coffee tree, having produced twenty-eight pounds of coffee, in the garden of Don Pablo de la Llave, at Cordova, and it is the certainty that this fact is unquestionably true, that induces me to give as the possible average of good grounds in Mexico, a produce more than double that which, in the Island of Cuba, is the maximum of the best year in three.

The cultivation of coffee in New Spain possesses at present, many advantages over that of sugar. The Arroba sells in the capital at from five, to seven dollars, (nearly double the price of the Arroba of sugar,) and may be raised at a much less expense; as a plantation, containing 200,000 plants, does not