Coffee is the crop that has made Java famous, and Java coffee is regarded the best produced. A few years ago it was the custom to sort the coffee with great care and then to store it several years in order to improve the flavor. The coffee thus seasoned was known as "old government" coffee. Much of the crop is now grown by private owners and is known as "private plantations" coffee.

Sugar has become the foremost export crop. Most of it goes to Europe; a small part of it is sent to the refineries of the United States. The great sugar plantations are likewise on the lowlands. Most of the plantations are owned by wealthy Hollanders, or by Dutch companies. The cane grows taller than that of the Cuban plantations; usually it is twice the height of the native laborers and grows so thickly as to make the field like a jungle. It requires a great sum of money to carry on a sugar plantation, for thousands of dollars must be spent in preparing the land.

But when one sees the great mills with their ponderous machinery, the thousands of native workmen, and the train loads of sugar which seem to be swallowed by the great steamships, one cannot help thinking that the sugar-planters make a lot of money in their business. Their homes, many of them, are beautiful palaces—as costly as can be found anywhere in Europe.

Indigo is another famous product of Java. The indigo plant would look like a rank bunch of weeds were it not planted in rows. The leaves, which contain the coloring matter, are picked two or three times a year and soaked in water. When they begin to rot, the coloring matter leaves the plant and mixes with the water, from which it is afterward separated by boiling. The coloring matter itself is called indigo; it is a beautiful blue used for dyeing yarns and cloth. The blue cotton cloth so much worn by the Dutch peasants is colored with indigo, and both the cloth and the dye find a market in pretty nearly every country in the world.

Coffee-drying in Java
[LINK TO IMAGE]

Years ago an enterprising Dutch botanist brought to Java some cinchona trees from South America. The experiment was successful and so many trees were afterward planted that Java now furnishes about half the world's supply of quinine, which is extracted from the bark of the tree.

Tobacco is extensively grown in Java, but one does not hear much about it, because a great deal of it is sold as "Sumatra" leaf. Tea-growing has become a great industry in Java and the tea in quality is as fine as that grown in China. Women and girls are the pickers. They work with head and arms bare, each wearing a loose gown resembling a Japanese kimona without sleeves. As fast as they are picked the leaves are piled on squares of white cloth. When the cloth contains enough to make a bundle of good size the picker carries it on her head to the factory, where the leaves are first wilted, rolled into compact form and then dried on great stone floors that are shielded from the sun. The hundreds of pickers with their brightly colored gowns and white bundles, form a wonderful kaleidoscope picture.

In recent years petroleum, long known to the natives, has added much to the wealth of Java. The thrifty Hollander studied well-drilling in Pennsylvania and California; then he put his training to work on the Javanese oil-fields. As a result Java is beginning to supply not only the East Indies, but also Japan with coal-oil.