ed, can take care of
two orlongs of land. The usual mode is this:--an advance is made by
the capitalist to the laborer for building a house, and for
agricultural implements; he then receives two dollars monthly to
subsist on, until the end of the third year, when the estate or
plantation is equally divided betwixt the contracting parties.

The Chinese and even European cultivators used formerly to engage
the Chinese who had just arrived from China; they paid off their
passage-money, and then allowed them two dollars monthly, for
provisions, for one year; with a suit of clothes, by which means the
cost of the labor of one man averaged about three dollars monthly;
but this plan is attended with risks.

The cost attendant on the cultivation of two orlongs of land, with
pepper, for three years--the Chinese laborer receiving the usual
hire of _five_ Spanish dollars monthly--will be nearly as follows:--

Spanish dollars.
Price of land, clearing, and planting 40
Quit rent, at 75 cents per annum per orlong 9
Two thousand plants 4
" dadap props 6
Implements 6
House 10
Labor 200
Interest, loosely calculated at 30
---
Total Spanish dollars 305

In a very good soil a pepper vine will yield about one-eighth of a
pound of dry produce at the end of the first year; at the end of the
second, about a quarter of a pound; and at the expiration of the
third, probably one pound; at the end of the fourth, from three to
three-and-a-half pounds; ditto fifth, from eight to ten pounds.
After the fifth year up to the fifteenth, or even the twentieth
year, about ten pounds of dry merchantable produce may be obtained
from each vine, under favorable circumstances. The Chinese
speculator used to rent out his half-share of a new plantation for
five years, to his cultivating partner, after the expiration of the
first three years, at the rate of thirty piculs per annum; the total
produce of these five years giving abo