May i, 1885.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



«53 



CEYLON PLANTING : SEEING THE TEA GLOW : 

 WITH A GLANCE AT CAOAU, CARDAMOMS AND 

 OTHER "NEW PRODUCTS." 



THE KELANI VALLEY— TALAWA ESTATE— SUGARCANE CULTIV- 

 ATION ON THE COLOMBO-AWISAWELLA ROAD— BRICK AMU 

 TILE MANUFACTORIES — THE LABUGAMA RESERVOIR— EA1ILY 

 ATTEMPTS AT AGRICULTURE — TEA FLOURISHING IN THE OLD 

 .sTGAO FIELDS— CACAO IN MATALE — SHADE TREES— TREAT- 

 MENT OF LEDGER CINCHONAS— MUST CINCHONA PERISH ?— 

 COFFEE SNUFFED- OUT BY BLACK BUO. NATIVE COFFEE 

 KILLED BY MUG — EUROPEAN COFFEE EXTIRPATED ON 

 ACCOUNT OF BUG SPREADING FROM IT TO TEA — A CLEAN 

 SWEEP OF COFFEE — CINCHONAS ALSO BEING ERADICATED 

 — ESTATES IN ELKADUWA — A CONTRAST IN CLIMATES 

 —DIFFERENT TREATMENT OF HIGH AND LOW TEA 

 NECESSARY — GROWTH OF TEA IN THE I.CWCOUNTRY AND ON 

 THE HILLS— SOIL — THE TAPROOT OF THE TEA PLANT. 



In the course of journeyiugs occupying nearly a 

 month of time and extending over some two hundred 

 and fifty miles distance, I have seen tea growing at 

 every elevation from a few feet above sea-level to 

 an altitude here (Lindula) of six thousand feet, and 

 I can, in describing what I have seen, use only the 

 degrees of favourable comparison, " good, better, 

 best." There are plants growing, as I have said, a 

 few feet above sea-level, but in journeying up the 

 beautiful and fertile Valley of the Kelani — ove r 

 which, according to Hindu legend, the sun pauses 

 with delight in his diurnal course — the first regular 

 tea estate occurs at the twentieth mile from ColomBo 

 on the left of the Ratnapura Road. The property, 

 like so many others in Ceylon, belongs to the ubiquitous 

 " De Soysa." It is called " Talawa," the beautiful 

 word by which the Sinhalese describe an open glade ; 

 so that Talawakcle is the forest of the glade or 

 open space, the open space in that case being, doubt- 

 less, the flat (comparative Hat for Dimbula) chosen 

 as the site of the present temporary terminus of 

 our grand mountain railway. Mr. De Soysa's low- 

 country " Talawa " is doubly interesting, as being 

 not only the first tea estate visible on the road ur 

 the Kelani Valley, but as combining three of the 

 great cultures of Ceylon : coconuts and cinnamon are 

 grown on the lower portions of the land, while tea 

 is planted up to the summit of a knoll on which 

 stands a conspicuous bungalow. Neither coffee nop 

 sugar is now cultivated on a large scale in the 

 valley, but patches of both may be seen around native 

 houses. Indeed, the extent to which sugarcane is 

 cultivated in garden plots by the sides of the road 

 at once arrests the attention of the traveller from 

 Colombo to Hanwella and Awitawella, as much as 

 does the series of brick-aud-tile making establish- 

 in en Is which exist for the first portion of the way. 

 Deposits of good, tenacious clay are plentiful, but 

 we had proof that they do not extend far beyond 

 the banks of the river, in the f.ict that, as we 

 passed upwards, we s-.w a large force employed in 

 digging out clay to be used in a puddled form for 

 closing the leaks in the rocky bed of the Labugama 

 Reservoir, whence Colombo is soon to derive its 

 supply of water. The existence of fissures in the 

 gneiss is, in this case, most unfortunate, and the 

 remedy must involve large expense ; for we noticed, 

 that, in older to get at the bed of clay, an enormous 

 superincumbent mass had to be removed of the fertile 

 red mould, over expanses of which in the neighbour- 

 hood of Hanwella a beautiful English-like sward is 

 spread. There are few prettier or more "home-like" 

 grass lauds in Ceylon. The covering of red soil re- 

 moved (this red soil being doubtless the form of 



laterite called " cabook " in its most advanced stage 

 ot comminution and decomposition), the clay to be 

 used for puddling and closing up the cracks iu the 

 Labugama Reservoir had to be carried a distance of 

 ten miles before beiDg used ! It is not only tho 

 distance hut the ascent of five hundred feet which 

 must render this process very expensive. The work 

 is, iu every sense, a great work, and, when it is 

 completed, it will tend to keep Colombo more than 

 ever the healthiest city of the tropics, besides making 

 the harbour even more than at present attractive 

 to shipping. Nearly two years ago, I was able to 

 appreciate the enormous amount of ' work involved 

 in laying so many miles of iron piping from one 

 of the sub-ranges of " the Peak " to Maligakanda, 

 Colombo, the pipes being then in course of 

 laying. Now, they are bidden from view, except 

 where they are carried across the few tributaries 

 which enter the Kelani in its lower course. 



I need offer no apology for this digression in favour 

 of works which will render Labugama more famous 

 than it has already become from being the scene 

 of royal "kraals" or "corrals" where Princes of 

 the reigning British family and representatives of 

 royalty witnessed the capture of the royal boasts of 

 our forests, those elephants to which, according 

 to Hindu belief, all others make obeisance. 

 The reservoir hill with its cleared summit is 

 a conspicuous object from every point in the 

 Lower Valley of the Kelani, which gets gradually 

 dotted over with outlying and more or less detached 

 hills as we go up stream, until around Awisawella 

 and Ruwanwella they aggregate, and are the scenes of 

 a most promising series of tea estates. Having men- 

 tioned the sugarcane as grown in patches by the 

 j natives, mainly to be used for sucking purposes, the 

 ' juice being nutritious as well as refreshing, I 'may 

 as well advert to the attempt made about forty 

 years ago to grow sugar on a large scale in the nei«h- 

 bour hood of Awisawella and Situwaka. In being shown 

 over the tea-covered undulations of Penrith estate by 

 Mr. F. W. Byrde, I was much interested to learn 

 that I was walking over what had once been expanses 

 of eugarcane, a Sinhalese man accompanying us who 

 remembered the first clearing aud planting with sugar- 

 cane of the land for the late Mr. John Armitage. 

 He also pointed out the site of the bungalow occupied 

 by the superintendent, my old friend, Mr. Alexander 

 Vallauce, whose writings made a lasting impression 

 on my mind from the fact that each sentence ended 

 with a note of admiration (!). I met him in 1S59 

 on Kirklees coffee estate in Udapussellawa, when he 

 told me how much troubled his mother and his sister 

 Janet were that he could not regularly attend the 

 services of the Kirk. More fortuuate than many others 

 this honest and prudent man, as superintendent of 

 coconut, sugarcane and coffee estates, was able to 

 save money and retire in the eveniug of his life to 

 his native country where tbe services of the Kirk 

 could be easily availed of. I need scarcely say 

 that sugar cultivation' was no more successful in the 

 Valley of tbe Kelani than in the Valleys of the 

 Mahaweliganga, the Kahmanga, the Mahaoya, or the 

 Gintara and Nilganga. But I learned that the ex- 

 periment near Awisawella resulted in a considerable 

 and permanent native cultivation cf the cane from 

 which a good deal of coarse sugai^or rathe 

 jaggery ia manufactured. 



In the old chenas of the once sugar fields I 

 saw tea plants flourishing, as in. Iced "they Sourish 

 under all possible conditions if the climate is 

 sufficiently moist. In this characteristic tea differs 

 essentially from cacao, which Mr. Robert I 

 of Matalc told me was never tried in Trinidad 

 ou old sugar laud. Cacao does not desiderate moisturo 



