Part 11 (1/2)
The value of the product depends on two factors, age and the care with which it is sorted. Formerly, in the Dutch East Indies, coffee-growing, for the greater part, was a government privilege, and the crop was kept for several years in storage before it was permitted to be sold--therefore the term ”Old Government” Java. Other coffee was designated as ”Private Plantations.” The quality of coffee is greatly improved with age. Brazilian and other American coffee-beans are rarely seasoned by storage.
American coffees are almost wholly sorted by machinery. This process, however, merely collects beans of the same size; it still leaves the good and the bad beans together, though it is to be said that among the largest beans there are fewer poor ones. In the coffees handled by the Arab dealers all the sorting is done by hand, the very choice grade selling in the large cities of Europe for the equivalent of nearly three dollars per pound. All machine-sorted coffee is greatly improved by a subsequent hand-sorting to remove the imperfect beans.
The naming of the different kinds of coffee is somewhat arbitrary. Thus, Brazilian coffees are commercially known as _Rio_ because they are s.h.i.+pped from the port of Rio de Janeiro; the same name is applied to the product s.h.i.+pped from Santos. Nearly all Venezuela coffees are called _Maracaibo_ although they differ much in kind and quality; most Central American coffee is sold as _Costa Rica_; most peaberry varieties are known as _Mocha_; and most of the East India product is popularly called _Java_, no matter whence it comes.
[Ill.u.s.tration: COFFEE PRODUCTION]
Of the American coffees Rio const.i.tutes about half the world's product.
After sorting, the larger beans are often marketed as Java coffee, and when the beans have been roasted it is exceedingly difficult to tell the difference. The best Maracaibo is regarded as choice coffee, but its flavor is not liked by all coffee-drinkers. The best Honduras and Puerto Rico coffees take a high rank and command very high prices, retailing in some instances at sixty cents per pound. A very choice peaberry is grown in the volcanic soils of Mexico to which the name of _Oaxaca_ is given; most of it is sold in the United States as a choice Mocha.
Mocha is the commercial name of a coffee at one time marketed in the Arabian city of that name. Since the completion of the Suez Ca.n.a.l, Hodeida has been the chief centre of the Arabian coffee-trade. Formerly most of this coffee was grown in the Province of Yemen, but now it is brought to Hodeida, from Egypt, Ceylon, and India.
About all the product is hand-sorted. The choicest is sold in Constantinople, Cairo, and other cities near by, in some instances bringing five dollars per pound. Very little, and only that of the most inferior quality, ever finds its way into western Europe or the United States. Even the best Mocha is not superior to fine Oaxaca coffee.
Java coffee is renowned the world over for its fine flavor. The best quality was formerly that which had been held in storage to season for a few years. The government coffee was generally the better, but some of the private plantations crop is now equally good. Some of the Sumatra coffees are equal to the best Java beans.
The Liberia coffees have never been favorites in the United States on account of their flavor. In Europe they are used for blending with other varieties.
Of the entire coffee-crop of the world, the United States consumes more than three-quarters of a billion pounds--a yearly average of very nearly eleven pounds for each inhabitant. This is nearly three times as much per inhabitant as is consumed in Germany, and almost fifteen times the average used in Great Britain. Nearly all the world's crop is consumed in the United States and western Europe.
Chicory, parched grain, pease, and burnt parsnip are sometimes added as adulterants to ground coffee. Of those, chicory most nearly resembles coffee in flavor and taste. It is harmless and usually improves the flavor of inferior coffee. A tariff recently placed upon chicory has somewhat lessened the use of it.
=Tea.=--The tea of commerce consists of the dried and prepared leaves of an evergreen shrub (_Thea chinensis_) belonging most probably to the _camellia_ family. Tea has been a commercial product of China for more than fourteen hundred years, but seems to have been carried thither from India about five hundred years before the Christian era; for its virtues were praised by (the probably mythical) Chinung, an emperor of that period.
The cultivated plants are scarcely higher than bushes, but the wild plant found in India is a tree fifteen or twenty feet in height. The cultivated plant is quite hardy; severe winters kill it but ordinary freezing weather merely r.e.t.a.r.ds its growth. It thrives best in red, mouldy soils; the choicest varieties are grown in new soils. The leaves are not picked until the plants are three or four years old.
Two general cla.s.ses of tea are known in commerce--the green and the black. Formerly these were grown on different varieties of the plant, but in the newer plantations no distinction is made in the matter of variety; the color is due wholly to the manner of preparation.
The plants are watched carefully during the seasons of picking, of which there are three or four each year. The April picking yields the choicest crop of leaves, and only the youngest leaves and buds are taken.[35] A single plant rarely yields more than four or five ounces of tea yearly.
Each acre of a tea-garden yields about three hundred and fifty pounds.
After picking, the leaves are partly crushed and allowed to wilt until they begin to turn brown in color. They are then rolled between the hands and either dried very slowly in the sun, or else rapidly in pans over a charcoal fire--a process known as ”firing.” The former method produces _black_, the latter _green_, tea. The color of the latter is sometimes heightened by the use of a mixture of powdered gypsum and Prussian blue. In the black teas the green coloring matter of the leaf is destroyed by fermentation; in the green teas it remains unchanged.
The greater part of the Chinese tea designed for export is packed rather loosely in wooden chests lined with sheet-lead, the folds and joints of which are soldered in order to make the cover both air-tight and moisture-tight. A full chest contains seventy-five pounds of tea. The j.a.pan product is also packed in moisture-tight wrappers, the original parcels being usually ten-pound, five-pound, and pound packages. Similar devices are used in preparing the India and Formosa teas for ocean s.h.i.+pment.
The chief tea-producing countries are India (including Ceylon) China, j.a.pan (including Formosa), and Java. A successful tea-garden is in operation near Charleston, S.C. A small amount is grown in the Fiji and Samoan Islands. The Ceylon and Formosa teas take a very high rank.
[Ill.u.s.tration: AREA OF TEA PRODUCTION]
Great Britain and her colonies consume the bulk of the tea-crop. The average yearly consumption per person is eight pounds in Australia, six in Great Britain and Cape of Good Hope, and more than four in Canada. In the United States and Russia it is less than one pound per person.
Before the opening of the Suez Ca.n.a.l, in 1869, most of the crop for the English market was despatched by way of Cape of Good Hope. So important was it to get the consignments to London without loss of time, that fast clipper s.h.i.+ps were built especially for carrying tea. Since the opening of the ca.n.a.l the crop has been s.h.i.+pped mainly by the Suez route.
A part of the tea required for the United States reaches New York by way of the Suez Ca.n.a.l, but the movement is gradually changing since the building of the fast liners that now ply between Asian and American ports. These steams.h.i.+ps carry it to Seattle, or to Vancouver, whence it is distributed by rail. The increased cost of s.h.i.+pment by this route is more than offset by a gain of from five to seven days in time.
In some respects the Russian ”caravan route” is the most important channel of the tea-trade. The tea is collected mainly at Tientsin, and sent by camel caravans through Manchuria to the most convenient point on the Siberian railway. Not only the s.h.i.+pments of brick tea[36] for the Russian market, but the choicest products for western Europe also are sent by this route. It is probably an economical way of s.h.i.+pping the brick tea, but a more expensive method of s.h.i.+pment for the latter could not be found easily; it is preferred from the fact that, no matter how carefully sealed, the flavor of tea is materially injured by an ocean voyage.
It is evident, therefore, that for the tea product alone the Siberian railway will soon become an important factor in the commerce of Europe.
s.h.i.+pments of tea are also sent from Canton to Odessa, Russia, but this route is not less expensive in the long run than the Cape route, and the tea suffers as much deterioration from the shorter as from the longer voyage.