Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/136

116 in Ceylon, were burned over and planted to tea; yet in many places in the Preangers one sees the bleached skeletons of Arabian trees still standing, and the abandoned plantations smothered in weeds and creepers, and fast relapsing to jungle. The virgin soil of Sumatra has so far escaped the severest attacks of the blight, and the center of coffee-production there is near Padang, on the west coast, whence the bulk of the crop goes directly to England or America in British ships.

The blight forced the Dutch government to begin its retirement from the coffee-trade, and but the smallest fraction of the coffee exported now goes from government plantations or warehouses. Nearly all the Sumatra plantations are owned or leased by private individuals, and the greater part of coffee lands in Java are cultivated by independent planters, who sell their crop freely in the open market. With the wholesale replanting of the Liberian tree in place of the Arabian, and the shipping only of the large, flat Liberian bean instead of the Mocha's small, round berry, it is questionable whether the little real "government Java" that goes to market is entitled to the name which won the esteem of coffee-drinking people for the century before the blight. The Dutch government still raises and sells coffee, but under strong protest and opposition in Holland, and as a temporary concession during these times of financial straits.

Public opinion was gradually aroused in Holland, and opponents of the culture system at last spoke out in the States-General; but not until the prices of sugar and coffee had fallen seriously, and the blight had