A pepper garden is generally planted with plenty of room for roads, so as to secure easy access to all parts of it and with the least possible grade, which should not be more than one foot in twenty. The garden contains anywhere from five to fifteen acres and is divided into plots by hedges of shrubs, each plot containing from five hundred to one thousand plants. The plants are pruned or thinned by hand as they grow bushy at the top, when the flexible stems generally entwine at the top of their support and then bend downward, having their extremities as well as their branches loaded with fruit. It matters not how many stalks grow from the same root until the vine begins to bear fruit, but when fruit bearing begins only one or two stems should be left, as more would weaken the root and it would not, for that reason, bear as abundantly. All suckers and side shoots must be carefully removed. Trenches are cut to the neighbor props where the vines have failed, and through these trenches superfluous shoots are conducted, where they soon ascend around the adjacent tree. By this means the plantation is of a uniform growth, and, since the ground is kept well weeded and is elevated, and since there is an open border of twelve feet wide around each garden, there is given to the plantation an admirable symmetry and neatness of appearance. [Illustration: HARVESTING OF BLACK PEPPER] [Illustration: COAST NEAR MANGALORE] The pepper vine or climbing shrub is mentioned by Sir John Mandeville in his travels of 1322 to 1356 as follows: “The pepper growethe in manere as doth a wylde vine that is planted fast by the trees of the woodee for to susteynen it by, as doth the vyne and fruyt thereof hangethe in manere as Reysinges; and the tree is so thikke charged that it semethe that it wolde breke, and when it is ripe it is all grene as it were ivy berryes; and then men kytten them as men doe the vynes and then they putten it upon an owven and there it waxeth blak and crisp.”