and valleys nearer the coast grows the _cafe de
tierra caliente_, or coffee of the hot land.

[Illustration: ON THE ALTAMIRA HACIENDA, VENEZUELA

The long pipe crossing the center of the picture is a water sluiceway
bringing coffee down from the hills]

Coffee growing has become the main agricultural pursuit of the country.
In 1839 it was estimated that there were 8,900 acres of land planted in
coffee, and in 1888 there were 168,000,000 coffee trees in the country
on 346,000 acres of land. In the opening years of the twentieth century
not far from 250,000 acres were devoted to this cultivation, comprised
in upward of 33,000 plantations. The average yield per acre is about
250 pounds. The trees are usually planted from two to two and a quarter
meters apart, and this gives about 800 trees to the acre. The triangle
system is unknown.

[Illustration: CARMEN HACIENDA, FRONTING ON THE ESCALANTE RIVER,
VENEZUELA]

In this country, the coffee tree bears its first crop when four or five
years old. The trees are not subject to unusual hazards from the attacks
of injurious insects and animals or from serious parasitic diseases.
Nature is kind to them, and their only serious contention for existence
arises from the luxuriant tropical vegetation by which they are
surrounded. On the whole their cultivation is comparatively easy. On the
best managed estates there are not more than 1,000 trees to a
_fanegada_--about one and three-quarters acres of land--and it is
calculated that an average annual yield for such a _fanegada_ should be
about twenty quintals, a little more than 2,032 pounds of merchantable
coffee. It is to be noted, however, that the average yield per tree
throughout Venezuela is low--not more than four ounces.

There are no great coffee belts as in Mexico and Central America. Many
districts are days' rides apart. The plantations are isolated, and there
is lacking a co-operative spirit among the growers.

Methods of cultivating and preparing the berry for the market are
substantially those that prevail elsewhere in South America. Most
plantations are handled in ordinary, old-fashioned ways; but the better
estates employ machinery and methods of the most advanced and improved
character at all points of their operation, from the planting of the
seed to the final marketing of the berry.

JAVA. Java, the oldest coffee-producing country in which the tree is not
indigenous, was producing a high-grade coffee long before