Fbb. 1, 1887.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



S4f 



any other delicacy. The exporters, no doubt, send 

 U8 of their best, but we do not know what to do 

 with it when we have it. The Turks might send us 

 a coffee mission, or even, if this unhappy business iu 

 Egypt were settled, the French. The taste is ready, 

 and it only awaits the means of gr itification. The 

 only proprietor cf an English coffee-house who knew 

 how to make coffee as it is drunk m favoured local- 

 ities abroad soon realised a fortune. If the French 

 would but teach us how to make coffee we might 

 teach them to improve their make of tea, on the 

 principle of an exchange of lessons. They are wofuliy 

 benighted in this matter, even in the centre of civili- 

 zation. In the outlying districts they h;ive a rooted 

 idea that tea is physic, and they have been known 

 to offer it, pending the arrival of the doctor, for the 

 relief of a broken limb. They never make it strong 

 ecough ; their tea is emphatically h'it hot water be- 

 witched. And the instrument of witchery is apparently 

 the old familiar one of a birch-broom, — Daily News. 



INDIAN COFFEE CULTUEE. 



BY AN EX-PLANTER. 



Though the cultivation of coft'ee by Englishmen is 

 of no great antiquity, yet for the last 50 or 60 years, 

 it has had a peculiar fascination for our ambitious 

 "younger sols," and that this charm still hoids good 

 the captains of outward-bound passenger stearanrs 

 know full well. It is for those whose thoughts have 

 thus turned down this new and curious road to fortune 

 that these notes are put together. For them we 

 attempt a f«uggestive and 6uffii;ient sketch of this 

 attractive labour, as well as profitable enterprise ; 

 while others, whose connection with coffee i* coufined 

 to the refreshing matutinal draught or after-dinner 

 digestive sip, may be curious to see how their son-* 

 or brothers defy malaria and fevcr, livinj a life of 

 hardship and adventure imperfectly pictured by those at 

 home. 



Coffee thrives in many parts of the world. A map 

 coloured to show the regions where its cultivation is 

 profitably carried out would exhibit a broad zone of 

 habitation on both sides of the Equator completely 

 circling the globe. One or two districts thus included, 

 by some happy combination of climite and soil, have 

 attained to fame through this proJuct alone. There 

 is Brazil, in South America, where scores of hundreds 

 of miles of admirable volcanic soil are clo'hed with 

 bushes, and the revenue of an empire fluctuates with 

 its good or bad seasons. In -Jamaica, under the 

 British flag, this mild beverage has almost ec'ipsed 

 the profitable production of a stronger diink for which 

 the island has been famous. On the opposite African 

 coast, again, the negro state of Liberia rears a low- 

 land species named after the locality, and indigenous. 

 Caft'a, on the Abyssinian tablelands, is held by many 

 to be the native home of coffee, and it is still grown 

 th^re in a rongh-and-ready way. But from sandy 

 Syrian terraces above Mocha comes perhaps the most 

 famous growth of coffee — that variety which made the 

 beverage famous in Oonstantinople and Europe more 

 than two hundred years ago. Its superlative strength 

 and aroma are due lai'g^ly to the care exercised by 

 Arab cultivators in marketing only the ripest and 

 choicest cherries. Mmy of the lesser Pacific islands 

 grow coffee, but in a scattered, careless fashion, 

 amongst those teeming jungles where the sunbirds 

 flash and parrots nest, so brilliant in feather that one 

 might well believe nature had used them to wipe 

 her most lavish paint box out with. 



Fiji, since the annexation, has become prosperous. 

 Its coffee is rising in estimation, but there crops up 

 in an acute form the labour difficultj', perhaps the 

 most serious question of all those which can vex a 

 planter.* Home labour in this delightful island is 

 instinctively lazy, and, moreover, pampered by a well- 

 meaning hut " grandmotherly " Ooverumeut. Con- 

 sequently, resource is had to labour ships, which scour 

 the Pacific picking up every man or boy who is 

 willing to apprentice himself for three years. But 

 for this single matter we should say to the hesitating 



* More serious in the case of coffee is the introduc- 

 tion in its very infancy of the fatal leaf fungus. — En. 



novice, " Try Fiji 1 " The climate is pleasant and the 

 land is unquestioBably of wonderful fertiUty, 



But it is to Ceylon and India that most young 

 men's eyes turn when they think of seeking this 

 manner of fortune iu new land». Oejlon, *'the 

 brighte-t jewel iu the English Crown," has been a 

 very Garden of E leu to th e tropical adventurer : 

 in our opinion its soil is to-day as unexhausted as it 

 ever has been. True, the island is not just now so 

 vividly prosperous as some years ago, but this in 

 great measure is the result of overdoing the coffee 

 enterprise, and flooding the high-class labour market 

 with an endless stream of " chick dorees," all 

 willing enough to work, only without a particle of prac- 

 tical knowledge. But the great shadow that has been 

 upon Ceyion is that of the drea led leaf disease. 

 Tbis terrible little fungus spots coffee leaves with 

 yellow, finally stripping and killing the bushes over 

 wiiole mountain ranges. It has sent down the value 

 of estates 50 per cent all over the island. Before 

 the disease appeared you could hardly grow coffoe 

 in any style without realizing something of a profit. 

 On certain estates — "on Patnasoil" — 40 per cent for 

 moiiej invested has been returned year after year ; 

 and now — well, some cynical proprietors, well qualified 

 to speak, say the only way to make coffe'- pay in 

 Oey'ou is to pull every bush up, planting tea in its stead. 



Good coffee is grown in Southern India. Here labour 

 is generally fairly abundant, and very good in quality. 

 In most districts the climate is healthy: "jungle fever" 

 may be reduced to a minimum by a cautious planter, 

 snd there is geuerally some sport to be had near at 

 tim-8. 



It is with a by no means unpleasant sense of free- 

 dom the wanderer goes up to his jungles, his last 

 link wi'h home broken when the big ship that has 

 borne him over seas went down on the horizon, and 

 all the rich fumre opening before him. He goes up- 

 country as far as the railway will tane him, and then 

 has to rely upon country carts, the muichml or hammock 

 suspended from a pole, or horseback if he can get a 

 mount. 



The first evening alone in his Traveller's Bungalow 

 is the pause before the curtain rises to-morrow, and 

 he sees those hills and gorges in which he mus: live 

 and work for the next 10 or 20 years — which perhaps, 

 indeed, he may never quit; but he puts awiy this 

 Utter thought if he be of stuff stout enough for a 

 pioneer, aud gives himself up keenly to the novelty 

 of his surroundings. Blase indeed must be the wanderer 

 who has forgotten how dai-k was that Indian evening 

 under the fig trees of the little English station, how 

 obsequious the native attendants seemed, how the mul- 

 titudinous voices of the night, the jackals yelping on 

 themiidan, the squirrels chirruping overhead amongst 

 the rafters, bats and owls outsiJe, and a world of 

 insects in the brushwood, combined in one continu- 

 ous concert. Fiie-flies hovered ab jut the trellis of the 

 verandah, and inside the heavy mouotonous flap of 

 the punkah overhead lulled him to repose; for the 

 rest, all he remembers of his first evenitig ia 

 that it seemed he had hardly sought the slielter 

 of sheets and mosquito curtains when his servant 

 shook him gently by the shoulder and thrust a suggestive 

 cup of hot coft'ee upon his attention. 



Making a start by moonlight — that wonderful silve 

 radiance that floods a tropical landscape with mellow 

 light— or, perhaps, at very earliest dawn, he has 

 turned his face to the blue hills that tower before 

 him long ere the sun is due in the East. Through 

 slumbering hamlets, in their heavy green shrouding of 

 bananas, he passes, disturbing a cooly or two asleep 

 before the doorstep of some better-housedcountrymim, 

 and the peasants start up to stare, or salaam — if 

 they can get their wits about thetni in time— as the 

 sahib canters by, his heavy baggage in country carts, 

 drawn V>y amiable white oicen, trundling after him. 

 Broad rivers are crossed, all black and silver in the 

 moonlight, wln-re 'he car's tro into the tlo .d up to 

 their aisles or higher, snd the cattle drink as they 

 plunge auii sniff tnrough their sparkling bath, while 

 each driver shouts and twists their tails until they may 



