“The work does not stop there,” said the steward with a smile. “When the coffee is dry it goes into a machine which takes off the shell and then into another machine which blows it perfectly clean. After that it goes to the sorting room, where the girls separate the good beans from the bad and grade the good into five grades.”
“And then what?” came from Sam.
“Then the coffee is placed in bags and sewed up—that is, the coffee which goes to the United States and England. When you get it, it is roasted and ground.”
“And then we take it and boil it, and strain it, and put milk and sugar to it, and drink it down, and that’s the end of it,” broke in Darry. “What a lot to do just for one cup of coffee! I never dreamed of such work before.”
“There is something else that is done with coffee, though not here,” said Professor Strong. “In Brazil they often paint coffee black for the South African market, and in other places coffee is polished so that it shines like silver. Every country has its peculiar taste and the dealer must do his best to suit that taste or lose the trade.”
After walking through the coffee grove, they turned back to the warehouses, and Juan Greva explained the various tools at hand for caring for the plants. “The coffee bush is a hardy one, but must be carefully watched if we wish to get the best results,” he said. “It must have enough water but not too much, and we must be careful of grubs and worms.”
It was now growing warm, and the whole party was glad enough to retire to the shelter of a palm grove behind the warehouses. On two sides of the grove were long rows of fruit trees with bushes of various kinds of berries growing between. They sat down and a servant presently appeared with a pitcher of iced lemonade and a platter of little cakes covered with honey.
“This looks like a land of plenty,” said Mark, leaning back on a bench and taking a deep breath. “How fresh and green everything is! It seems to me a man ought to be able to make a living without half trying.”
“The trouble down here has been the constant revolutions,” answered the professor. “Nothing has been safe, and nobody felt like settling down to steady work. But that will pass away in time, and then South America will take a leap forward that will astonish those living in the North.”