36o 



^HE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [October i, 1885. 



to 20 dozens. The miueral was stated to be fuuud iu pipes, 

 slriogs, and irregular masses called " sops," a description 

 ■which, substitutmg modern terms for oldeu, applies equally 

 to the 1. eyloii graphite iormations. Since the exhaustion of 

 the Oumberland mines, the best ore for pencils is said iu 

 some books to be obtained from Siberia, while no doubt the 

 massive and softstove polish black-lead, occurringiu various 

 parts of Germany— Bavaria, Bohemia, &c.— is applied 

 to the manufacture of pencils. It canuot-be questioned, 

 also that some of the finest quality Ceylon plumbago is 

 thus usid iu Britain, and also in the United States. 



Thenfollo'vcd notices of the various methods of manu- 

 facturing pencils, from the pi riod when bliicks of black-lead 

 were sawn into pirces until Coutc of Paris in 1705 discovered 

 the method i.uw univer.9ally adopted of mi.ving finely ground 

 graphite and clay together nnd subjecting the mass to 

 pressure and heat, plumbago crucibles being used to give a 

 final firing to pencil leads. Iu the one city of Nurnberg 

 250,00ii,0U0 of pencils, worth £400,000, are turned out an- 

 nually, so that Mr. Ferguson felt justified in tsiimating the 

 production of the whole world at 1,000 millions, worth at 

 least £1,500,000. Clay in varying quantities is used to give 

 adhesion to crucibles, but those with the largest proportion of 

 plumbago are of course the best. 



To quote again: — The Canadian and United States plum- 

 bago is of as pure a quality as that of Ceylon, but good as the 

 American ore is, when freed from the rock in which it is gen- 

 erally scattered after the fashion of mica, I suspect the high 

 cost of the labour necessary for first mining .-ind then separ- 

 ating the mineral by the wet process— for the dry has 

 proved a failure— will prevent continued and successful com- 

 petition with Ceylon. ^Ve shall soon see, however, for the 

 Joseph Dixon Crucible Company had produced in 1S82 a 

 quarter of a million pounds of native plumbago, against 

 16,000,000 pounds inipoi ted from Ceylon, and a determin- 

 ation to "go ahead" was expressed. Some as y.t un- 

 thought of machinery, cheap chemicals, and appliances must, 

 however, be brought into play before the pure, massive Cey- 

 lon product and our far chea]jer labour are distanced in the 

 race. And if, as Professor Dawson states, .some of the Can- 

 adian oie is fibrous enough to indicate by its texture its 

 vegetable origin, thi.re is room to suspect that, however pure 

 the mineral may be as carbon, its mechanical condition can- 

 not be so good as that of the more highly crystallized Ceylon 

 plumbago. One important element in the question is, that, 

 according to our American friends themselves, enterprize and 

 competition have had such influence, that Ceylon plumbago 

 can now be obtained by them at 25 per cent of what it cost 

 some years ago. 



The effect of competing demand for the substance, nowever, 

 between 1^50 and 1«70, chiefly on the pari of the Battersea 

 Crucible Company in England and the Joseph Dixon Com- 

 pany in the United States, was to enhance the value of the 

 ore to such an extent in Ceylon as to produce temptations 

 to cheating, which the native headmen, whose business it 

 was to weigh the output and collect the royalty at the 

 pit's mouth, were unable to resist. These estimable serv- 

 ants of Government cheated the diggers out of bribes by 

 threatening to report them as having surreptitiously re- 

 moved plumbago on which royally had not been paid, and 

 they imp;irtially cheated Government by accepting bribes 

 to largely uuder-report the quantities really dug and re- 

 moved. The Customs figures enabled the Government au- 

 thorities to appreciate th') vast extent to which the de- 

 moralizing system had gone, and so in 1S73 legislation was 

 initiated, the main object of which was the collection of the 

 royalty at the custom-house- a mode in itself far prefer- 

 able to the direct system of collection previously in force, 

 and securing everv sixpence of royally due, because, pract- 

 ically, every huiidredweight dug is exported, the quantity 

 as yet u.sed in local foundries or for any local purpose be. 

 ing quite insigniflcaut. I believe a few crucibles tor gold 

 and silversmiths' use are locally made, and the result of 

 inquiries made by Mr. W. P. Kanesinghe at my request, 

 is that Ceylon potters occasionally employ the mineral for 

 giving a glaze to pottery, as is the practice in India. 



The mercantile community strove hard in 1873 to make 

 out a case for the entire abandonment of the royalty, but 

 the Press supported Sir William Gregory's Government in 

 resisting the pressure brought to bear in this direction, only 

 that the Observer strongly urged a rate so low as It.') per 

 ton, which after four years' experience of ElO per ton, under 

 which exports declined, waa conceded iu 1877. Under this 



rate which is still in force, the exports more than trebled 

 in the six years between 1878 and 1883. 



Then follows a desciiption of the largest plumbago mine 

 iu Ceylon : — 



Mr. De Mel has been amongst the most pr.'spcrous of 

 all who have engaged iu the plumbago digging enterprize 

 iu Ceylon, his prosperity btuig mamly due to the rich yield 

 of his Kurunegala district mine, which is by far the most 

 important in Ceylon, having been suiik to a depth of -i.JO 

 feet near the base of a lull, Polgola, which seems to be 

 Largely composed of fine quality plumbago. From this 

 mine Mr. De Mel obtained an average of 8U0 tons annually 

 for eleven years, his profits, he authorizes me to say, be- 

 ing at the rate of £2,000 per annum. No wonder if, not- 

 withstanding lessened pioduction and profits in the past two 

 years, couneettd with this mine there is a steam crane for 

 raising water and a considciable length of De&iuville rail- 

 way for the carriage of the ore from pit mouth to cart, or 

 that the enterprising owner has commenced a base level 

 tunnel at an estimated total cost of £2,000 to freeandkeip 

 the mine free of water, whether the result of springs m 

 the rocks or of monsoon rains. The eifect of the latter 

 during the recent exceptionally heavy burst of the south- 

 west monsoon in May was to fill up the pits and put a stop 

 to digging everywhere. This, irrespective oi a fall of £2 

 per ton from the price to which the miueral had been sent 

 up the war scare. 



The tunnel in Mr. De Mel's mine, when completed, will 

 not only carry away water but facilitate the output of 

 miueral from the lower which are generally the richer strata, 

 besides ventilating the mine so as to prevent injury from 

 mephitic gases or inconvenience from the smoke of the ex- 

 p'osives employed iu blasting. The draft will also alleviate 

 the heat in the interior of the mine, which the workmen now 

 complain of as sometimes intolerable. F'or blasts under water 

 large quantities of dynaiuit.: cartridges are employed, in 

 addition to gunpowder used in portions of the galleries com- 

 paratively free f lom moisture. The wages paid to diggers 

 iu this mine, chiefly lowcountry Sinhalese, vary from Sid. 

 per diem for coolies to Kl tor those who perform the bor- 

 ing and blasting operations. In the Pasuun ICoralo there 

 is a system of payment tor labour by shans in the pro- 

 fits, alter all preliminary expenses defrayed by the ca, itah.st 

 have been reimbursed. 



The hill in which Mr. De Mel's mine has been opened— 

 Mr. W. A. Fernando having another at a higher elev- 

 at.on than De Mel's with a depth of 330 feet— seems to be 

 permeated in its whole extent by generally horizontal veins 

 of the richest plumbago, associated with beautifully snow- 

 white crystalline to semi-opaque quartz, the latter oc- 

 casionally shtnving specks of garnet and bands of soapstone, 

 and Mr. De Mel brings to the surface practically pure 

 plumbago. As regards the generality of pits, he agrees 

 with the estimate of Mr. \V. W, Mitchell (who has prob- 

 ably purchased, prepared and shipped to America as well 

 as Europe more plumbago than any European merchant 

 who ever resided in Ceylon,; that the > xtraueous matter 

 iu the shape of earth and rock brought to the pit's mouth 

 is equal to one-half of the whole, about 10 to 15 per cent 

 being the proportion carried to Colombo and separated from 

 the ore in the preparing yards. Mr. Fernandn's estimate, 

 howtver, of foreign matter brought to Colombo is 5 per 

 cent for pieces of quartz round which plumbago adheree, 

 and 24 per cent for minute fragments of silica, iron, A;c., 

 mixed with the smaller pieces and dust. Any person who 

 has wituested and appreciated the difticulty and the ex- 

 peusiveuess of the processes whereby small fragments of 

 rock are separated from the lower classes of plumbago m 

 Ceylon, can well imagine the obstacles to profitable separ- 

 ation of the mineral Irom rock iu America, where there are 

 no masses but only scales of the mineral distributed 

 throughout the rock. 



Then followed a notice of a mass of plumbago only 11 lb. 

 short of (3 cwt. which De Mel exhibited when the Pimce of 

 Wales visited Colombo, and the statement that large masses 

 are sometimes although pure carbon yet of such Imrd con- 

 sistency as to be coniuaicially valueless. Mr. Ferguson 

 suggested that this form of plumbago and not the softer 

 kind should bo used for sculpturing elepluinis and other 

 objects. Then followed a description of the various sys- 

 tems in force in the three Provinces to which plumbago 

 mining is practically conline.l. In the North-Western 1 lo- 

 viuce all the mines are tiu private properly. In the Soulheru 



