sympathy, fired by the spirit of real
love for his fellows! There is no instance in the history of the French
people of a good deed done by stealth being of greater service to
humanity.

De Clieu thus describes the events that followed fast upon the
introduction of coffee into Martinique, with particular reference to
the earthquake of 1727:

Success exceeded my hopes. I gathered about two pounds of seed
which I distributed among all those whom I thought most capable of
giving the plants the care necessary to their prosperity.

The first harvest was very abundant; with the second it was
possible to extend the cultivation prodigiously, but what favored
multiplication, most singularly, was the fact that two years
afterward all the cocoa trees of the country, which were the
resource and occupation of the people, were uprooted and totally
destroyed by horrible tempests accompanied by an inundation which
submerged all the land where these trees were planted, land which
was at once made into coffee plantations by the natives. These did
marvelously and enabled us to send plants to Santo Domingo,
Guadeloupe, and other adjacent islands, where since that time they
have been cultivated with the greatest success.

By 1777 there were 18,791,680 coffee trees in Martinique.

De Clieu was born in Anglequeville-sur-Saane, Seine-Inferieure
(Normandy), in 1686 or 1688.[19] In 1705 he was a ship's ensign; in 1718
he became a chevalier of St. Louis; in 1720 he was made a captain of
infantry; in 1726, a major of infantry; in 1733 he was a ship's
lieutenant; in 1737 he became governor of Guadeloupe; in 1746 he was a
ship's captain; in 1750 he was made honorary commander of the order of
St. Louis; in 1752 he retired with a pension of 6000 francs; in 1753 he
re-entered the naval service; in 1760 he again retired with a pension of
2000 francs.

In 1746 de Clieu, having returned to France, was presented to Louis XV
by the minister of marine, Rouille de Jour, as "a distinguished officer
to whom the colonies, as well as France itself, and commerce generally,
are indebted for the cultivation of coffee."

Reports to the king in 1752 and 1759 recall his having carried the first
coffee plant to Martinique, and that he had ever been distinguished for
his zeal and disinterestedness. In the _Mercure de France_, December,
1774, was the following death notice:

Gabriel d'Erc