Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/390

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374
COMMERCIAL DESCRIPTION OF

of which is in a good measure determined by the taste or caprice of the consumer. In the Dutch market, pale or new Java coiFee bears the same price as the coffees of St Domingo and Cuba, and is 15 per cent, worse than ordinary West India coffees, yellow coffee is 4½ per cent, better than Bourbon or even Mocha, and brown coffee is 25 per cent, better even than the last. In the London market, the average of Java coffees is 20 per cent, better than Jamaica. Java brown coffee in the London market is nearly on a par, but rather superior to Mocha. In the markets of Bengal and Bombay, Mocha coffee ranks very high, and is no less in the latter than 82 per cent, superior to Java. This relation, however, is only to inferior Java coffee, triage, as it is called in commercial language, such only having been sent to Bombay. The whole produce of Java in coffee is 120,000 piculs for the western parts or country of the Sundas, and about 70,000 for the eastern districts, or in all, the picul being 136 pounds avoirdupois, 25,810,000 pounds, which is equal to two-sevenths of the whole produce of the British West Indies, about the nineteenth part of the consumption of Europe, which is reckoned at 54,260 tons, or 486,158,960 pounds avoirdupois. The quantity of land in Java fit to grow coffee is immense, and any scarcity of it cannot be anticipated for many years. Such is its abundance, that it can hardly be