Of the class of large proprietors created under the republic of Pétion, but few undertook the cultivation of their own lands. The usage at once came into favour of letting them out in small lots to working men on the Metayer system, the landlord to receive half the produce, on the condition of furnishing, on sugar-cane estates, the mill and the other necessary appliances. With regard to produce, there are two classes recognised and kept distinct by law, namely, “la grande culture” (large farming) and “la petite culture” (small farming). The first consists in the cultivation of sugar-cane and similar articles; the second in the cultivation of provisions for the market. As in the “grande culture” half went to the proprietor, the tendency has been for some years to encroach with the “petite culture” on the lands reserved for the former. Each peasant is allowed a patch of ground near his portion of the cane-field on which to grow vegetables, and it has been found that his attention is more directed to this than formerly. As long as the sugar-cane is reserved for the manufacture of cheap rum to keep the population in a continued state of intoxication, the falling off in its culture is not to be regretted. In fact, the “great” and “little” culture did very well when anything exportable was cultivated, but now are of little practical importance, as they do not so much affect the great stay of the country, the coffee crop.[22] I may repeat that the first thing in point of importance in Haytian agriculture is the coffee-tree, which grows almost wild in every mountainous part of the country and around the cottages of the peasantry at elevations of from 500 to 7000 feet above the level of the sea--wild in the sense that the plants appear to spring from the seeds that have fallen from the parent trees, though occasionally I have seen them carefully planted round the cottages.