There are several kinds of coffee cultivated upon this estate, a practice quite common among the fazendieros of São Paulo. One variety, the “Bourbon,” is an early and regular producer, and for this reason is largely cultivated, since the fever of production seized the planters, in consequence of the rise in the price of coffee. This variety does not grow very high nor bear large-sized beans. Its life is shorter than many other varieties, it is sensitive and delicate, its branches lacking in flexibility, and it does not yield very large quantities of fruit. But against all these disadvantages, the planters set the fact that it can be grown rapidly, bringing a quick return to the owner. [Illustration: COLONISTS’ HOUSES AT MARTINO PRADO.] The common or native coffee tree has, however, most to commend it. It is strong, hardy, and well acclimatised, and has a long life, while its beans are large, and sell for the highest prices upon the market. Long experience has determined that it is the plant best adapted for the climate, and its flexible branches render the operation of gathering a simple one, which does not render the tree liable to damage. Its only drawback is the irregularity of its crop, which is good and poor in alternating years. All the older plantations are stocked with this variety, and there is no doubt that, in spite of other considerations, it is destined to remain when the “Bourbon” variety shall have disappeared. The “Bomcatu” or “Amarello” is a variety very similar to the common coffee, but has yellow berries, whilst the “Murta” is another variety which is very little grown, having too great an abundance of foliage at the expense of the fruit. At the “terrains” the gathered coffee is sorted by an ingenious process. The berries, black, red, and green all mixed together, are put into a tank of water, and the black berries being the lightest, float to the surface, and are run off along a cemented channel to a large concreted terrace, where they are spread out to dry in the sun. The red and green berries left behind are floated down another cemented channel to a machine which detaches the outer skins of the red berries, leaving the beans, which are now separated from the green berries, still intact, by a process of sifting in revolving perforated drums. These beans are now spread out upon the terrain, as are also the green berries, to be sun-dried in their turn. The time occupied in the drying process depends, of course, upon the sun, the black fruit generally drying in from eight to ten days. The beans of the red fruit, known as washed coffee, take time to colour, and after three or four days are banked up, and covered from the rain, until they assume the washed coffee colour. The green berries, in their turn, take longer, generally about twenty days.