Page:My Airships.djvu/28

 the moment when the finished and assorted product is loaded on the transatlantic ships, no human hand touches the coffee. You know that the berries of black coffee are red when they are green. Though it may complicate the statement, they look like cherries. Car loads of them are unloaded at the central works and thrown into great tanks, where the water is continually renewed and agitated. Mud that has clung to the berries from the rains, and little stones which have got mixed up with them in the loading of the cars, go to the bottom, while the berries and the little sticks and bits of leaves float on the surface and are carried from the tank by means of an inclined trough, whose bottom is pierced with innumerable little holes. Through these holes falls some of the water with the berries, while the little sticks and pieces of leaves float on.

The fallen coffee berries are now clean. They are still red, about the size and look of cherries. The red exterior is a hard pod or polpa. Inside of each pod are two beans, each of which is covered with a skin of its own. The water which has fallen with the berries carries them on to the machine called the despolpador, which