3 86 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[November i, 1884. 



as a manure anil for retaining moisture, and I would 

 plant plantains along ravines to be cut up a' required 

 and given in trendies on the ridges. 

 (To be continued.) 



PLANTING IN SOUTHERN INDIA : 



SOUTH WYNAAD NOTES : COFFEE DEPRESSION AND 

 PROSPECTS. 



Vytiiery, Sept. 17th. — I see that the eminent politician, 

 pork-pickler, and man of pleasure who represents Cavan in 

 Parliament, has been asking Mr. Cross questions as to the 

 disturbed state of this district, possibly with a view to 

 transferring the energies which are cramped by the Grimes 

 Act and the law regarding breach of promise, from Ire- 

 land to the west coast of India. From his reply Mr. Cross, 

 too, seemed to thiuk that we were in rather a bad way, 

 but added >tha.t the Government had appealed to all classes 

 to keep the peace. Perhaps it has done so, but in that 

 case the planters were not considered a sufficiently im- 

 portant class to be included in the appeal, for the only 

 notice Government has taken of any of us lately, has been 

 to send us each a circular, signed by the officer in charge 

 of the Wynaad Survey party, (dated, need I say, from 

 Ooty) to the effect that the demarcation of our estates, 

 which we were recently compelled to ca ry out at con- 

 siderable expense, will not be taken as establishing any 

 evidence of claim to the land. Government, too, as you 

 have doubtless heard, refuse to amend the law, so as to 

 enable employers to proceed against maistries and coolies 

 for the recovery of advances in cases of breach of con- 

 tract. Principally in consequence of this refusal, and of 

 the recent decisions of the High Court, with reference to 

 this law, one gentleman here has resigned the Honorary 

 Magistracy, and has given his reasons for doing so in a 

 letter to our Association, which would no doubt make Mr. 

 Grant Duff " squirm " if he ever read the papers. Let 

 us hope some of his colleagues may have their minds en- 

 lightened by it. This decision of Government affects planters 

 in other districts as much as ourselves, but I see that, in 

 spite of it, the Coorg men are showing their effusive 

 loyalty by trying to get up a yolunteer Corps. But I 

 suppose the real object is not so much to get up a 

 corps, as to get up the railway ; and that as soon as twenty 

 men have put down their names, we shall he told that 

 in case of a disturbance, a railway would enable these 

 heroes to move to the relief of the garrison at Cannanore. 

 Let me just say, in reply to your correspondent " Shedwell," 

 — who has been taken into the confidence of so many of 

 the mighty ones of the earth that I did not understand 

 the statement I spoke of, in my last letter, as having 

 been made to the Association, to be an official one. It 

 simply amounted to this, that a certain scheme of railway, 

 extension had been sanctioned by the home authorities, 

 and that a railway from Mysore to Wynaad and on to 

 the coast, was included in it. What alterations circum- 

 stances may compel the Government to make in this scheme, 

 before its completion twenty years hence, are probably only 

 known to inspired creatures like KootHoomi and " Shedwell" 

 himself. 



It is rather late in the day to refer to the letter of 

 " V. R." and " A. J. S " about the depressed state of the 

 planting community ; but, without entering at any length 

 into the matter. I may say that the general opinion here 

 is that " V. K." takes a far too gloomy view of things. 

 In the first place, if he only got E600 per ton for his 

 coffee last year, it must have been his own fault ; for one 

 firm on this coast offered R42'8 per cwt. (R850 per ton) 

 last Dec, and several planters got as much as R40 per cwt. 

 previous to this offer being made. I suppose that " V. R." 

 (in company, I regret to say, with a good many others of 

 us) thought he would do better by sending the coffee to 

 the London market. If he failed to profit by his specul- 

 ation he has only himself to blame. Again, as to not 

 talking to him about cinchi tua, he is somewhat unreason- 

 able. One company at Devala is reported to have sent 

 home 40,000 lb. of bark lately, and to have realized an 

 average of two shillings a pound for it, which would 

 leave a very handsome profit, and the bark sold by Messrs. 

 (lakes & Co. in Madras fetched 10 as. per pound. Be- 

 sides this, while not agreeing with the sanguine estimate 

 of 10 cwt. of coffee an acre made by " A. G. S." I cert- 



ainly think that 3 cwt is far too low an average on 

 any butquite worn-out soil. The letter of a Coorg "Planter," 

 which you published on the 13th instant, does not 

 give very much assistance to the controversy. There is 

 nothing in his letter specially worth controverting, except 

 the astounding statement that cinchona is a good shade 

 for coffee, it being well known to every planter who has 

 tried the experiment, that coffee planted up with cinchona 

 gradually goes back as the cinchona grows. Still, " Plant- 

 er," in his somewhat feeble meanderings round the sub- 

 ject, does at last make one statement that will command 

 general approval, and that is, that coffee laud is unable 

 to pay the tax on it just at present. If the Govern- 

 ment would remit this tax for a year or two, a great lift 

 would in many cases be given to struggling planters. We 

 often read notices in the paper directing Collectors to remit 

 the tax on land in years of scarcity, and it is difficult 

 to see why this should not be done in our case. The rent 

 paid on land held from Government, and not yet in cultiv- 

 ation, is also very high, going up to as much as EPS an 

 acre, after some years. The authorities pay little attention 

 to the representations of Planting Associations, but a little 

 agitation on these two taxes would at least be a more use- 

 ful and practical employment for Honorary Secretaries 

 than raising Volunteer Corps and becoming objects of de- 

 rision to every military officer sent up to inspect them. 

 Possibly if it could be arranged with Madame Coulomb 

 that the application for remission of the tax should fall 

 on the Chief Secretary's head, through the same hole in 

 the " Leaky Palace " 'that let the raiu in on King Shando's 

 or else on his feet when he is next standing on his head 

 in front of the " shrine," more notice might be taken of 

 it than if it arrived through the ordinary channel of 

 the post. 



The general prospects of the district for crop this year 

 are, as a whole, fairly good. We had a heavy burst of 

 the monsoon at the end of last mouth, which did some 

 damage to the coffee trees, and blocked the ghaut road, 

 but things are now all right again. With regard to the poet- 

 ical appeal you recently gave us on the subject of reduc- 

 ing coolies' pay, I am glad to be able to inform the Board 

 that the movement to cut the Chermers down from five 

 annas to four annas a day has been a success ; and the 

 higher sum is only paid on a few estates, where the 

 scarcity of Cauarese labour, and the pressure of work 

 make it absolutely necessary to keep up. a large gang 

 of coast coolies. I wont to assure your correspondent, 

 the "Regular Attendant," that I am not the author of 

 the letter which appeared last Saturday signed " Another 

 Attendant." On the contrary, I agree with the first of 

 these writers that the subject had best be left alone in 

 this column. — Madras Mail. 



COFFEE "A PASTIME FOE PE1NCES " : 



The Madhas Government Kicking it Downstairs. 



Gold Minks vs. Rhea Fiube. 



Vaytri, September 27th. 

 Coffee planting in Southern India is rapidly approach- 

 ing the stage to which the Times recently said keeping 

 up a deer forest in the highlands of Scotland has already 

 attained : it is becoming " a pastime for princes," a pretty 

 enough amusement for a well-to-do duke, or a millionaire 

 cotton lord ; but as a means of making a livelihood it is 

 getting a little played out. Ouida. who must find " the 

 steam yacht at Oowes," " the villa at Monaco," " the lion- 

 shooiiug box in Algeria," and the other usual adjuncts 

 of a subaltern in the Guards (iu her novels), getting 

 somewhat stale, might add "a coffee estate in the Wynaad " 

 to the numerous extravagances of her next hero. I can 

 assure the eminent authoress, that as a means of getting 

 rid of spare cash, 4 anna nap, which is the furthest I 

 have gone iu emulation of her brilliant creations, is a 

 perfect fool to it. Our staple product remains at a 

 hopelessly low price, and the Madras Mail is said to effect 

 a considerable saving in its printing department by keep- 

 ing Reuter's announcement, " M. P. Ceylon 63," perman- 

 ently in type. As for cinchona, which we relied on to 

 pull us through these bad times, it too has gone down 

 to zero, because, people tell us, the bankruptcy of some 

 big firm in Milan has thrown an enormous stock of 

 bark on the market. If this banruptcy had glutted the 

 market with "old masters," or cathedrals, or even barrel- 

 organ-grinders, one could understand the phenomenon ; 



