in the scale of wealth,
however, for it requires five times the capital to carry on a sugar
estate that would serve for a coffee estate. Some of the large sugar
plantations have been owned and carried on by Jesuit priests--we were
about to write ex-Jesuit priests, but that would not be quite correct,
for once a member of this order one is bound to it for all time. The
priest or acknowledged member of the organization may be forced for
prudential reasons to temporarily change his occupation, but he cannot
sever himself from the responsibilities which he has once voluntarily
assumed. There was a time when much of the landed and fertile property
of the island was controlled by the Church,--in fact owned by it,
though often by very questionable titles. The original owners, under
cunning pressure, perhaps on a threatened death-bed, were induced to
will all to the Church; or as an act of deep penance for some crime
divulged at the confessional, they yielded up all. To preserve this
property and possibly to cause it to produce an income for the Church,
certain priests became active planters. Extreme ecclesiastic rule, as
has been said, is greatly modified in Spain and her colonies, the
natural reaction of the hateful days of the Inquisition.

As the sugar plantation surpasses the coffee in wealth, so the coffee
estate surpasses the sugar in every natural beauty and attractiveness.
A coffee plantation, well and properly laid out, is one of the most
beautiful gardens that can well be conceived of, in its variety and
loveliness baffling description. An estate devoted to this purpose
usually covers a hundred acres, more or less, planted in regular
squares of one acre or thereabouts, intersected by broad alleys lined
with palms, mangoes, bananas, oranges, and other fruits; as the
coffee, unlike the sugar cane, requires partial protection from the
ardor of the sun. Mingled with the trees are lemons, limes,
pomegranates, Cape jasmines, and a species of wild heliotrope,
fragrant as the morning. Occasionally in the wide reach of the estate
there is seen a solitary, broad-spreading ceiba, in hermit-like
isolation from other trees, but shading a fragrant undergrowth.
Conceive of this beautiful arrangement, and then of the whole when in
flower; the coffee, with its milk-white blossoms, so abundant that it
seems as though a pure white cloud of snow had fallen there, and left
the rest of the vegetation fresh and green. Interspersed in thes