offee-producing districts are principally on the Pacific slope and
in the central plateaus of the interior. Plantations are located in the
provinces of Cartago, Tres Rios, San Jose, Heredia, and Alajuela. In the
province of Cartago are several extensive new estates on the slope to
the Atlantic coast. The San Jose and the Cartago districts are
considered by many to be the best naturally for the coffee tree. The
soil is an exceedingly rich black loam made up of continuous layers of
volcanic ashes and dust from three to fifteen feet deep. Preferable
altitudes for plantations range from 3,000 to 4,500 feet, although a
height of 5,000 feet is not out of use and there are some estates that
do fairly well on levels as low as 1,500 feet.

[Illustration: THE MODERN IDEA IN COFFEE CULTIVATION, COSTA RICA]

INDIA. Tradition has it that a Moslem pilgrim in the seventeenth century
brought from Mecca to India the first coffee seeds known in that
country. They were planted near a temple on a hill in Mysore called Baba
Budan, after the pilgrim; and from there the cultivation of coffee
gradually spread to neighboring districts. Aside from this legend,
nothing further is heard about coffee in India until the early part of
the nineteenth century, when its existence there was confirmed by the
granting of a charter to Fort Gloster, near Calcutta, authorizing that
place to become a coffee plantation.

[Illustration: PICKING COSTA RICA COFFEE]

[Illustration: COFFEE ESTATE IN THE MOUNTAINS OF COSTA RICA]

Planting was begun on the flat land of the plains, but the trees did not
thrive. Then the cultivation was extended to the hills in southern
India, especially in Mysore, where better success was achieved. The
first systematic plantation was established in 1840. For the most part,
the production has always been confined to southern India in the
elevated region near the southwestern coast. The coffee district
comprises the landward slopes of the Western Ghats, from Kanara to
Travancore.

About one-half of the coffee-producing area is in Mysore; and other
plantations are in Kurg (Coorg), the Madras districts of Malabar, and in
the Nilgiri hills, those regions having 86 percent of the whole area
under cultivation. Some coffee is grown also in other districts in
Madras, principally in Madura, Salem, and Coimbator, in Cochin, in
Travancore, and, on a restricted scale, in Burma, Assam, and Bombay. The
area returned as under coffee in 1885 was