The coffee-plant can be propagated from the seed, but the most prevalent method in Brazil is by young plants, which may be had by the thousand on old plantations. The young shrub is taken up in August--generally when it is about two years old--and planted in good soil. The fourth year it produces coffee, and the fifth year it commences to bear regular crops, the yield being from a pound and a half to three pounds per tree. Trees have been known to last for many years on good rich soil, and some on Mr. Moke’s plantation are still bearing which were planted forty years ago; on hill-sides, however, where the soil is light, the plant decays in the course of eight or ten years. The picking season commences in July, and in the low lands generally concludes by the end of August; among the hills, however, where there are frequent showers, and where there is much shade, the season does not close until some time in September.
The four coffee-growing provinces of Brazil, properly speaking, are Rio de Janeiro, San Paulo, Minas, and Bahia. In the two former the agriculturists have for some time past directed their attention almost exclusively to this article. In Bahia its cultivation is steadily, although slowly, increasing. Coffee is grown in the provinces of Maranham, Parana, and St. Catherine’s, but only to a very small extent, the amount produced being insufficient to meet the demand. The cultivation of coffee is rapidly increasing in St. Paulo, and is promoted by the railroad extending from Santos to Jundiahy. The United States usually takes one-half of the crop of Brazil coffee.
The following figures give the average quantity of coffee exported from the empire of Brazil during the undermentioned years, comprising a period previous and subsequent to the abolition of the slave trade in 1851, and showing a steady increase in the export since 1840:
1840-43 5,507,367 1843-46 6,519,380 1846-49 9,301,967 1849-52 8,542,965 1852-55 10,549,847 1855-58 11,465,719 1858-61 10,501,665
The yearly shipments from Rio in the last four years have been as follows:
bags. 1859 2,064,837 1860 2,150,188 1861 2,085,974 1862 1,477,904
besides 200,000 to 300,000 bags annually from Santos. The bags contain rather more than six arrobas, or one cwt. and a half.