for miles and miles along the beautiful groves of coffee trees,
clean-looking with their rich deep green foliage.

They seemed to have no great difficulty on the Dumont estate in obtaining
sufficient labour--greatly, I think, owing to the fair way in which
labourers were treated. Mr. Davy told me that over an area of 13,261
acres a crop had been maintained which averaged 81/4 cwts. per acre.

Experiments have also been made on the Dumont Estate (at an elevation of
2,100 ft. above the sea level)--chiefly, I believe, to satisfy the wish
of shareholders in London--in the cultivation of rubber, but it did not
prove a success--as was, after all, to be expected. It is not easy to
make the majority of people understand that coffee grows lustily in that
particular part of the State of Sao Paulo mainly because of the eminently
suitable quality of the soil; but it does not at all follow that soil or
climatic conditions which are good for coffee are suitable for rubber
trees, or vice versa. In the case of the Dumont Estates, although the
best possible land was chosen and three different varieties of
rubber--the Para, Ceara and the Castilloa were experimented with, it was
soon discovered that only one kind--the Ceara--attained any growth at
all, and this gave very little latex--owing undoubtedly to the nature of
the soil and the climate. The cost of extracting the latex was
prohibitive. With wages at four shillings a day a man could collect about
one-third of a pound of latex a day. Rubber trees could, in that region,
not be expected to produce more than one-fifth of a pound of rubber a
year, so that the cost of collecting and shipping rubber from
ten-year-old trees would amount to 3_s._ 3_d._ per lb., without counting
the cost of planting and upkeep.

By a special train on the Dumont Railway line I travelled across
beautiful country--all coffee plantations--the property of the Dumont
Company and of Colonel Schmidt, the "Coffee King," whose magnificent
estate lies along the Dumont Railway line. I regretted that I could not
visit this great estate also, but I was most anxious to get on with my
journey and get away as soon as possible from civilization. It was
pleasant to see that no rivalry existed between the various larger
estates, and I learnt that the Dumont Railway actually carried--for a
consideration, naturally--all the coffee from the Schmidt Estate to the
Riberao Preto station on the Mogyana Railway.

CHAPTER III