5oG 



fm f RoMCAL Amicijtfmtif. [Feb. i, m^ 



another direction for a steam engine, of cultiv- 

 ation, crop gathering and preparing, this fine old 

 Dumbara plantation -we were glad to find, affords 

 profitable employment to a far larger number of 

 hands — both Tamils and Sinhalese — than we had 

 at all anticipated. Blackman's Air Propeller — an 

 American fruit evaporating machine — Mr. Vollar 

 has found very useful in drying his cocoa. 

 Squirrels at one time so damaging to cacao pods in 

 Dumbara have now nearly disappeared. Rats do 

 a little injury and wild pigs occasionally are 

 troublesome; but on th» whole with the absence 

 of the dread hclopeltis, the cacao planter has no 

 enemy worth mentioning. 



Nothing can be more pleasant and refreshing 

 than an early morning walk, ride or drive on a 

 Dumbara plantation. Pallakelly is so well roaded 

 and has such variety of cultivation that a new 

 and delightful sense of the reality of a good 

 basis for planting prosperity in modern Ceylon, 

 is speedily borne in upon the interested inspector. 

 Pallekelly ought to be called the "Philadelphia" 

 of Ceylon; for, the plan which William Penn 

 adopted in laying out his Quaker City across the 

 Atlantic of giving the names of trees to his 

 streets — pine, maple, elm, spruce and so on — has 

 been adopted with cheering effect on modern 

 Pallekelly. In this way,we have the Satinwood avenue, 

 this estate road being bordered with a row of 

 flourishing satinwood trees ; we have the Sapu- 

 wood tree avenue ; and the Halmillille, Grevillea 

 and Inga 8aman avenues or roads, and no better 

 distinguishing, interesting and let us trust profit- 

 able feature could be desired. 



Of minor, but still very interesting cultivation, 

 we have on Pallekelly, the most careful piece of 

 Vanilla training we have yet seen in Ceylon and 

 the crops of pods averaging £100 a year in value 

 ought to be remunerative for what is" really a bit 

 of Garden culture. With Eubber not much has 

 yet been done, but the wonderful growth of the Ceara 

 trees (apart from their usefulness for shade) — some of 

 them a few years old being 30 feet high, 4^ 

 in circumference — with ready gatherings of more 

 than ^ lb. of rubber per tree experimented on, 

 afford encouragement to look for profit when system- 

 atic tapping can be effected. In a slack year 

 with cocoa and coffee crops, attention could 

 well be given to tapping the rubber with 

 surplus labour. Again, 50 acres of compara- 

 tively waste ground put under Sapan ought, some 

 years hence, in their supply of dyewood, to go far 

 to make up for short crops when such may be 

 experienced. 



More interesting was it to learn of a systematic ex- 

 periment in the culture of tobacco in the neighbour- 

 hood of Pallekelle. Dumbara has long been famous 

 for its tobacco ; but hitherto the culture of the 

 plant has, we believe, been confined to natives. 

 In this case, a piece of virgin forest land, 

 f'O acres in extent, was cleared, prepared and 

 planted with the greatest care, and the result in 

 a crop of 20 tons of very fine silky leaf, valued 

 at 'is i5d per lb. is regarded as very satisfactory 

 — the more so as it is felt that the proper time 

 to plant was not chosen. But tobacco is too ex- 

 hausting a crop to be profitably cultivated con- 

 tinuously, even in Dumbara. 



In conclusion we can only mention in one word the 

 charming and almost unequalled mountain, wood- 

 laud and river scenery enjoyed by the visitor 

 to Dumbara. I'rom an elevation of 1,600 feet 

 (about the level of Kandy) at the Pallekelly bun- 

 galow — the same but much improved on good old 

 " R. B. T.'s" almost historical residence — one of 

 the finest panoramic viewa in Ceylon is obtain- 

 Mh «xt«&cliD5ir9n Y»kde$s»g«la abpys Kuruacgala, 



past the bold EttapoHa and Asgeriya summits, 

 with Hunasgiriyakande and the Knuckles round by 

 Rangalla and the Medamahanuwara Gap to the far 

 south-east of Madulsima, if not of Badulla's 

 Namunukulakanda itself. How the panorama is 

 filled in with hill, dale, river, glistening paddy- 

 field and wide-extending jungle, or shade-covered 

 plantations, with all the wonderful effects of light 

 and shade visible in an upland tropical valley, no 

 words of ours could do justice in describing; and 

 our object in this imperfect notice of a brief visit has 

 not been to write about the scenery, but rather 

 to show how New Products in Old Districts are 

 laying a new and substantial foundation for an 

 approaching and, let us trust, comparatively per- 

 manent era of Planting Prosperity in Ceylon. 



NOTES FROM UVA:— COFFEE PLANTING. 



Haputale, 5th January 1887.— After wishing 

 yourselves and the "Old Rag" long life and 

 prosperity, with the New Year and many happy 

 returns of the season, I must apologise for my long 

 silence and explain that I was engaged on a small 

 job of planting a clearing icith cofec near a village 

 in the centre of the plains of Uva midway between 

 this and Wilson's Bimgalow, and not as from my 

 having lost the nib of my pen, as a friend surmised, 

 or because you sat upon me for my report of the 

 Ganiarala's murdering his wife in June last, 

 which case I shall allude to further on under the head 

 of crime in Uva and British justice as administered 

 in our petty Courts by sucking Magistrates. You will 

 see by the above that there are still believers in 

 the old product "King coffee," and while some are 

 planting tea and cinchona, as well as coffee, there 

 are not a few of us who believe in the revival of 

 the coffee enterprise in Uva, and some are turning 

 their attention to a better system ef cultivation, of 

 doing more justice to the coffee shrub by pruning, 

 handling and manuring, which necessary works for 

 some years back have been much neglected, owing to 

 the sad visitation of leaf-disease, financial difficulties, 

 grub, bug and other pests, such as Medical Inspector's 

 Registers, &c., but now with better prices for the 

 fragrant bean ruling in the markets of the world, sud- 

 denly, believers in the permanence and paying returns 

 of coffee cultivation, especially in Ut^a, are turningup, 

 while others are deploring that they dug up and 

 destroyed good young coffee fields to make room for 

 tea, cinchona, &c. Others are actually opening their 

 eyes to see that leaf -disease is not nearly so bad as 

 it used to be, and that it does less harm" to coffee 

 in Uva year by year ; in fact that leaf-disease is 

 wearing itself out, and " a consummation devoutly to 

 be wished ;" it will soon be a thing of the past, and 

 perhaps leave us for ever ; or like the potato-disease 

 and phyloxera on vines, rust on wheat, we will get 

 80 accustomed to it, and as "familiarity breeds con- 

 tempt " we will take little or no notice of leaf-disease 

 in the future and go on cultivating coffee "with n 

 heart for any fate still achieving, sHW pur.suing, learn 

 to labour and to wait," not at the same time put- 

 ting all our trust in the one product or like egers in 

 a basket making a head-long rush at T or D— T as 

 some wag wrote that some planters were afflicted with. 

 Green bug is another thing some young men of my 

 acquaintance have got on the brain, and fancy it 

 flying about with wings all over the estate up their 

 nostrils in (heir hair aud iu their boots ! I pity these 

 young men, but they will get cured of this 'mania 

 when they get older and are as familiar as I am with 

 bugs of all kinds, village bugs, black bug, white bug, 

 green bug, feted bug and jiggers of every variety. 

 Green bug is the new mania and " cholera morbus ;" 

 that is to suuff out all the remaining coffee buslies 

 in the Island according to some wiseacres, while few 

 persons take any measures to rid the coffee of this 

 Mst: they simply close their eyes and wait for the 

 Inevitable death aud extinction of the coffee tree; 

 tbe»e g9uts bowevtr dgu't »cll ao c>ld stager lik^ 



