December i, 1884.] T*HE TROPTCAL AGRICULTURIST. 



429 



same size as in the ground-floor in each and the room 

 each measures 124 ft. x 31 ft. and have boarded floors. 

 These two rooms are used solely for withering, 

 and have withering space for 8,000 lb. green leaf. 

 Nothing in truth could be more perteot than the 

 arrangements for the important process of withering. 

 The machinery was supplied and erected bv Messrs. 

 John Walker & Co. First there is the turbine of 30' 

 horsepower, as we have already indicated ; an 

 Excelsior roller and a Challenge roller, a Kinmond 

 drier and a Sirocco. The mode in which the Excelsior 

 roller dealt with successive feedings of leaf was all 

 that could be desired. Means ire already provided 

 for manufacturing 200,000 lb of tea per annum, and 

 it is estimated this amount will be made uext season. 

 With additional withering space, which can easily be 

 supplied, and with more machinery for which space 

 and water-power are already provided, the factory 

 would be capable of turning out 400,000 lb. of made 

 tea per annum, which amouut, it is estimated, will 

 actually be manufactured a few sea.-ons hene^. The 

 total outlay on the factory and fittings, the machinery 

 and a long watercourse to the head of the Carolina 

 falls, a 12 ft. cart-road nearly half a mile leading to 

 the Government road, a bungalow, two conductors' 

 houses, lines for factory hands and a central rice store 

 amounts as we have indicated to K35.000;* which 

 Bum will quickly be paid off by the saving effected in 

 centralizing the saving of machine manufacture over 

 hand, the extra value of the tea from its being "factory 

 bulked " and dispatched in frequent large breaks 

 and by a small profit on purchased leaf. We may 

 add that leaf is being received at 9 cents per lb. from 

 seven estates besides the four estates constituting the 

 K. A. W. group. 



If anyone had predicted ten years ago that the 

 progress of the tea enterprize would be such as to 

 demand and justify the erection of such buildings and 

 the provision of such machinery for one group of 

 estates, we suspect he would be deemed wildly 

 sanguine ; but Messrs. Leechman & Co. have com- 

 bined prudence with boldness in making such 

 ample provision for the harvests of tea leaves 

 which their portion of Ambagamuwa will yield, — is 

 yielding, in truth, and we feel confident that the 

 great Central lea Factory on Carolina estate near 

 Watawala station is but the precursor of many such 

 erections, not only iu Ambagamuwa, but in all the 

 planting districts of Ceylon, lowcountry and bi_h, 

 which the rapid progress of the Vea enterprize will 

 necessitate. The duty of Government is also to adopt 

 a policy of combined wisdom and boldness, by every- 

 where providing facilities ot trausit fir the new pro- 

 duct aud all the labour and commodities which its 

 culture aud manufacture will demand 





TEA, CINCHONA AND COFFEE IN AMBA- 

 GAMUWA AND DIMBULA. 

 (hrom an ohl planter.) 



FROM THE LOWCOUNTRY TO THE HILLS — GAMPOLA AND 

 NAWAI.AI'ITIYA IN THE OLD DAYS— CHANGE DURING THE 

 LAST 15 YEARS — COFFEE AND TEA — UNCULTIVATED LAND — 

 SOIL AND CROPS IN DIMBULA — THE COFFEE CROPS OF YORE 



— THE COFFEE LEAF FUNGUS ASCENT OF KII.AGA1.A IN 1SJ7 



— THE VALLEY OF DIMBULA — HOPE FOR THE FUTURE — ON 



THE HILLS AND IN THE LOWCOUNTRY— CINCHONA QUININE 



MANUFACTURERS — THE HAPUTALE RAILWAY. 



After an unbroken residence of over a dozen years at 

 altitudes not exceeding 300 feet, 1 very gladly accepted an 

 invitation to visit Lindula, with the further favour of being 

 franked there and back ; a necessary coudition with a poor 

 old buffer, whose heart is much heavier than his purse, and 

 who is neither an entertaining nor instructive companion, 

 so that my entertainercanhave little return fortheoutlay, un- 

 less, indeed, it should give an ultimate return as a commercial 

 investment, of which there is some reasonable hope. 



When the train reached Peradeniya, I was on known 

 ground, for, during a residence of fourteen years in the 

 Masnawatte Valley, I made at least one hundred and 

 twenty journeys to Kandy and back. I remember Gampola 

 when there was only a thatched resthouse and a few Sin- 

 halese kadies, and Nawalapitiya when the sole resident 

 was an old Moorman that kept tavalam-cattle to carry rice 

 from Gampola to the infant coffee estates beyond. As 

 fifteen years have elapsed since I last visited those regioDS, 

 the changes were very remarkable. Fine coffee fields had 

 been restored to nature, and places abandoned twenty-five 

 to thirty years ago were become fine tea-gardens ; but the 

 bulk of the cultivated laud of thirty to forty years ago is 

 covered with mana grass, and the tea fields are chiefly on 

 new land, though in a few places trial is being made of 

 the long-abandoned coffee fields, the success of which is 

 rather to be hoped for than expected. No coffee 

 property in Ambagamuwa ever paid back the capital spent 

 in establishing it, even in the ante-Hemileia days ; but 

 it seems now fully proved that tea may be profitably grown, 

 even on spots where coffee was early abandoned ; whether 

 the land that coffee was taken off, as long as there was 

 any to take, can be utilized for the new product with a 

 profitable result, is not yet an established fact. Indeed, 

 there is much of the land through which the railway passes 

 between Galboda and Hattnn that would not grow a 

 profitable crop of any economic plant with which a pretty 

 wide experience has made me acquainted. 



In passing from Hatton into Dimbula by the Nuwara Eliya 

 road, the region of slab rock is left behind, and the soil 

 progressively improves in depth and quality right up 

 to Nanuoya station and beyond, where, in mauy places, 

 there is soil of good and uniform quality, ten feet deep 

 and more. There is still coffee in Dimbula and Lindula 

 as fine as I have ever seen, but, alas, for the crop ! Very 

 fine trees without a speck of fungus ; yet jt required a close 

 inspection to detect the few fruits that nestled amoug bright 

 foliage. AVhat a contrast to the crops I had to do with in 

 Matale East thirty years ago, when a single primary 

 branch of three years old coffee yielded five hundred 

 ripe cherries, thirty-five of which were picked from the 

 base of one pair of leaves ! There is very little fungus on 

 the coffee at present, but it has left its mark deeply im- 

 pressed on many a once flourishing field, aud many a clear- 

 headed, hardworking man has been brought to ruin by 

 an agent that on its first appearance looked so insignific- 

 ant. Much has been done by way of retrieving the terrible 

 disaster. Cinchona has been grown by millions and tea is 

 being planted by tens of millions, and, if there is only suf- 

 ficient capital forthcoming, Dimbula will in a few years 

 yield larger profits in tea than it has ever done in coffee. 



In 1847 I organized a party to watch the sunrise from 

 the top of Rilagala. I cleared a track through the nilu, 

 and discovered a comfortable cave to pass the night in 

 about 100 feet below the summit. With early dawn, we 

 were at our post and overlooked the whole valley of Dim- 

 bula, and its subsidary offshoots, an unbroken sheet of 

 forest but for one tiny spot, which is now, I believe, 

 known as Eadella. At the end of nearly thirty-seven years', 

 I looked down on the same scene from the top of Abbots - 

 ford. What a change had been wrought ! Hardly a tree 

 of the original forest remains between the two points of 

 view, and all the space between spread out like a map, 

 showing a vast field of 50,000 acres of cultivated laud 

 that must have cost well nigh two millions sterling and 

 which, had no blight fallen on it, would now have been 

 yielding its proprietors an aggregate income of three to 

 four millions of rupees, giving a comfortable living to forty 

 thousand people and contributing directly and indirectly 

 well-nigh two million rupees to the colonial revenue. 



There is nope as near a certainty as any future event 

 cau well be, that the depression under which the planting 

 interest now suffers will pass away in a few years, and 

 that the new product that has found a congenial home in 

 the colony will restore the prosperity that raised it to so 

 high a place among the outlying possesions of the British 

 Empire. Some of the Dimbula proprietors are already 

 reaping the advantages of an early acceptance of the 

 situation created by Hemileia va&tatrix, in profits from 

 tea greater than were ever expected from coffee on the 

 same land. We can put our tea into the market ten cents 

 per pound under the India average, aud converting a 



