hands of a man envious of the happiness I enjoyed in being useful to my country; and who, not being able to rob me of this coffee-tree, broke off a branch from it." Water becoming very scarce on board the ship in which he sailed, the passengers had to be put on short allowance, but the enthusiastic Clieu nevertheless shared a small portion with his cherished plant.
He had no sooner arrived at Martinico than he planted, in a soil suitably prepared for it, his precious shrub, which had become more precious from the risk it had run, and the care and anxiety it had cost him. At the end of eighteen or twenty months he collected an abundant crop, and distributed the beans among the religious houses and various inhabitants, who knew the value of this production, and felt how much it was capable of enriching them. They spread from neighbour to neighbour, and Clieu continued to distribute the fruit of the young plants which grew under the shadow of their common parent. Guadaloupe and St. Domingo were soon abundantly supplied. The new product increased and multiplied everywhere. But what rendered its progress more rapid at Martinico was the blight that had struck all the cocoa plants, without exception. The smaller inhabitants, to the number of five or six thousand, were absolutely deprived of a natural product, almost the only one they had to give in exchange for the commodities sent from France. They had no other resource except the cultivation of coffee, to which they exclusively devoted themselves, with a success that far surpassed their losses. In the course of three years, the island was covered with as many thousand coffee-trees as there had formerly been
