Notwithstanding this occasional neglect, there appears no progressive falling off in the crops; they vary as before, but on the whole keep up to the average.
The quality of Haytian coffee is excellent, but its price in the market is low, from various causes. Sometimes the crop is gathered hastily, and ripe and unripe seeds are mixed; and then it is dried on the bare ground, regardless of the state of the weather; and when swept up into heaps, it is too often intermingled with small stones, leaves, and dirt; and fraudulent cultivators or middle-men add other substances to increase the weight. I have known carefully-selected parcels sent to France marked Mocha, and there realising full prices. Nowhere is coffee made better than in Hayti; it is roasted to a rich brown, ground and prepared with a sufficient allowance of the material, all on the same day, and the result is perfect.
As with other crops in the world, there are good years and bad years; but with neglected plants, the bad come oftener than they would if due attention were paid to their cultivation.
In 1789, when the French possessed the island, the amount produced greatly exceeded anything seen since, with the exceptions of 1863, 1875, and 1876. In those years above 71,000,000 lbs. passed through the custom-house, and it is calculated that about 15,000,000 lbs. were smuggled.
The variations have been as follows:—
| Lbs. | |
| 1789 | 88,360,502 |
| 1818 | 20,280,589 |
| 1824 | 46,000,000 |
| 1835 | 48,352,371 |
| 1845 | 41,002,571 |
| 1860 | 60,514,289 |
| 1861 | 45,660,889 |
| 1863 | 71,712,345 |
| 1864 | 45,168,764 |
| 1873 | 64,786,690 |
| 1874 | 54,677,854 |
| 1875 | 72,637,716 |
| 1876 | 72,289,504 |
| 1877 | 52,991,861 |
| 1878 | 63,255,545 |
| 1879 | 47,941,506 |
| 1880 | 55,562,897 |
This striking increase in the amount of coffee produced since the great war would appear somewhat to contradict the theory of the degeneracy and idleness of the Haytians, but it must be remembered that the women and children are very hard-working; that the women are in a majority, and that the work is mostly done by Nature; the men, also, are not very light-handed taskmasters. If a space be cleared round the bushes with a mauchette—easy work that a child can do—the increase in a plantation will continue, as I have remarked, by the beneficent hand of Nature; the heavy rains knock off the ripe berries and scatter them down the mountain-sides, and give rise to those matted undergrowths of coffee-bushes whose fecundity often surprises the traveller. It is not likely that the produce of the coffee-plants will decrease.
During the French colonial days the principal product was sugar, and in the year 1789 they exported 54,000,000 lbs. of white sugar and 107,000,000 lbs. of brown. As the slaves left the estates, so production decreased, and was fast disappearing when Christophe in the north forced the people by severe measures to resume its manufacture. He gave the great estates of the old colonists to his generals and courtiers, with an order that they should produce a certain amount of sugar under pain of forfeiture. As they had the population under their command, and an unrestrained use of the stick, they succeeded fairly; but as soon as this pressure was removed, the manufacture of sugar ceased, and it is no longer found in the list of exports, except as a fancy article to obtain bounties.
In 1818 the export of sugar had fallen from 161,000,000 to 1,900,000 lbs., and in 1821 to 600,000 lbs., then to disappear from the custom-house lists.
The prejudice against sugar-making is still strong, though, could the owners of estates prove to their people that large profits would accrue to them from its manufacture, it is very probable that the prejudice would die out. A friend of mine tried to persuade one of his cultivators to aid him in a sugar-making project, but the man answered sulkily, “Moué pas esclave” (“I’m not a slave”), and walked away. The negroes do not like a bell to be used to ring them to work, as it reminds them of colonial days, but some bold innovators have introduced and continued the practice, without producing any other effect than occasional grumbling.