8,920,000 lbs. in the United States,
and 32,564,000 lbs. for Great Britain.

The cultivation of coffee forms the present riches of Costa Rica, and
has raised it to a state of prosperity unknown in any other part of
Central America. It was begun about fifteen years ago; a few plants
having been brought from New Granada, and the first trial being
successful, it has rapidly extended. All the coffee is grown in the
plain of San Jose, where the three principal towns are situated--about
two-thirds being produced in the environs of the capital, a fourth in
those of Hindia, and the remainder at Alhajuela, and its vicinity. The
land which has been found by experience to be best suited to coffee is
a black loam, and the next best, a dark-red earth--soils of a brown
and dull yellow color being quite unsuitable. The plain of San Jose is
mostly of the first class, being, like all the soils of Central
America, formed with a large admixture of volcanic materials. Contrary
to the experience of Java and Arabia Felix, coffee is here found to
thrive much better, and produce a more healthy and equal berry on
plain land, than upon hills, or undulating slopes, which doubtless
arises from the former retaining its moisture better, and generally
containing a larger deposit of loam.

I am inclined, in a great measure, to attribute the practice of sowing
coffee in sloping land in Java to this fact, that the plains are
usually occupied by the more profitable cultivation of sugar-canes. In
Arabia, the plains are generally of a sandy nature (being lands which
have, apparently, at no very distant geological period, formed the bed
of the sea), which may account for the plantations existing only upon
the low hills and slopes.

A coffee plantation in Costa Rica produces a crop the third year after
it is planted, and is in perfection the fifth year. The coffee trees
are planted in rows, with a space of about three yards between each
and one between each plant, resembling in appearance hedges of the
laurel bay. The weeds are cut down, and the earth slightly turned with
a hoe, three or four times in the year; and the plant is not allowed
to increase above the height of six feet, for the facility of
gathering the fruit. The coffee tree here begins to flower in the
months of March and April, and the berry ripens in the plains of San
Jose in the months of November and December, strongly resembling a
wild cherry in form and appearance, being covered with a