enerally grown in small gardens. Large
plantations, as they exist in other coffee-growing countries, are not
seen in Arabia. Many of these small farms may be parts of a large estate
belonging to some rich tribal chief. The native Arabs do not use coffee
in the way it is used elsewhere in the world. They drink _kisher_, a
beverage brewed from the husks of the berry and not from the bean.
Consequently, the entire crop goes into export. But bad conditions of
trade routes, political disturbances, and small regional wars, absence
of good cultivation methods, and heavy transit taxes imposed by the
government, have combined to restrict the production of Yemen coffee.

Land for the coffee gardens is selected on hill-slopes, and is terraced
with soil and small walls of stone until it reaches up like an
amphitheater--often to a considerable height. The soil is well
fertilized. For sowing, the seeds are thoroughly dried in ashes, and
after being placed in the ground, are carefully watched, watered, and
shaded. In about a year the shrub has grown to a height of twelve or
more inches. Seedlings in that condition are set out in the gardens in
rows, about ten to thirteen feet apart. The young trees receive moisture
from neighboring wells or from irrigation ditches, and are shaded by
bananas.

At maturity the trees reach a height of ten or fifteen feet. Since they
never lose all their leaves at one time, they appear always green, and
bear at the same time flowers and fruits, some of which are still green
while others are ripe or approaching maturity. Thus, in some districts,
the trees are considered to have two or even three crops a year. All the
trees begin to bear about the end of the third year.

[Illustration: A RARE PICTURE SHOWING MOCHA COFFEE GROWING ON TERRACES
IN YEMEN, ARABIA]

CUBA. Coffee can be grown in practically every island of the West
Indies, but owing to the state of civilization in many of the lesser
islands, little is produced for international trade, excepting in
Jamaica, Guadeloupe, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad, and
Tobago. In past years a considerable quantity of good-quality coffee was
produced in Cuba, the annual export in the decade of 1840 averaging
50,000,000 pounds. Severe hurricanes, adverse legislation, the rise of
coffee-growing in Brazil, the increase in cultivation of sugar and other
more profitable crops, practically eliminated Cuba from the
international coffee-export trade.

MARTIN