The Resident introduced me to the French planters, Mr. and Mrs. Ch., and asked them to take me in, which they agreed to do. Having rented an old plantation from the French company, they had had the good fortune to find a regular frame house ready for them. After I had moved into my quarters the Resident returned to Vila, and I remained on the borders of the wilderness. What followed now was a most unsatisfactory time of waiting, the first of many similar periods. Having no servants, I could undertake nothing independently, and since the planters were all suffering from lack of hands, I could not hire any boys. As the natives around the French plantations at the Canal du Segond are practically exterminated, I saw hardly any; but at least I got a good insight into the life on a plantation, such as it was. With his land, Mr. Ch. had rented about thirty boys, with whom he was trying to work the completely decayed plantation. Many acres were covered with coffee trees, but owing to the miserable management of the French company, the planters had changed continually and the system of planting just as often. Every manager had abandoned the work of his predecessor and begun planting anew on a different system, so that now there was an immense tract of land planted which had never yet yielded a crop. In a short time such intended plantations are overgrown with bush and reconquered by the wilderness; thus thousands of coffee trees were covered with vines and struggled in vain for light and air. It seem incredible that in two weeks, on cleared ground, grass can grow up as tall as a man, and that after six months a cleared plantation can be covered with bushes and shrubs with stems as thick as one's finger. The planter, knowing that this overwhelming fertility and the jealous advances of the forest are his most formidable enemies, directs his most strenuous efforts to keeping clear his plantation, especially while the plants are young and unable to fight down the weeds. Later on, weeding is less urgent, but in the beginning it is the one essential duty, more so than planting. Mr. Ch. had therefore an enormous task before him, and as he could not expect any return from the coffee trees for two or three years, he did as all planters do, and sowed corn, which yields a crop after three months.