October i, 1885.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST* 



261 



Province only licenses to din aio i:luii»ed, at the rate of ElO 

 per Huuum, but no rent. In the "Western Province, besides 

 the charge for licenses, a rent-niyalty of one-tentli of the 

 plumbago dug or its eiiuiv.ileiit value is levied, which adds 

 considerably to the reviiiue. Sir AVm. Gregory iu 1873 an- 

 nounce.; ihat the policy of the Uovcrnment would bo tu lease 

 and not to sell plumbago lands, so as to prevent a monopoly iu 

 the hands of the rich. Mr. .SiiuivUrs is, however, iu favour 

 of selling such lands ouiright, lut only iu small lots. He 

 quotes m favour of hisvrew tlie results of a sale in ISSO, when 

 a lot of 1 acre, 1 rooil and 13 perches realized K8,150. As a 

 general rule the rent-royalty exacted in the "Western Province 

 is somewhat below the sum of Ho per ton chaiged on ex- 

 port, .so that the total impost on such plumbago is RIO per 

 ton. Uwneis of private ii.iiits an-i diggers on Government 

 lauds in the Southern Province pay only K5. Mr. 

 Ferguson said of the leasing system : — 



The merit of the system, provided the rent-royalty is 

 moderate, is that the lessee of the land pays only and just 

 iu proportion to the productiveness of the land he has leas- 

 ed, payment being accepted ill money or in kind. At the 

 end of eacli year the lease can be either renewed or aban- 

 dunud, aud plumbago Isinds which have been for a certain 

 time abandoned, and which evidently do not contain appreci- 

 able quantities of the metal, are solil on the terms applied to 

 ordibary Crown lands. 



At preseiit as sources of plumbago the Nortli-"\Vestern 

 Province seems entitUnl to first r.ink, the "Western follow- 

 ing as a good second, while the Southern is a distant third, 

 the Galle Customs retunis showing an export of one-tenth 

 of the whole plumbago sent away against iiine-tenths from 

 Colombo. Three fourths of ail the plumbiigo exported 

 from Ceylon are dug in the Kurunegala aud Kaiutara 

 districts. It was then noticed that exaggerated figures have 

 appeared iu the bluebooks as to the number of plumbago 

 mines in the island, from the inclusion of abandoned 

 pits and mere holes. While the pits opened from first to 

 last must amount to thousands, those being worked at any 

 one time may be taken at a few hundreds, fiom 3U0 to6fl0. 

 "Water iu the soil and from rainfall is the great difficulty. 

 To quote : — 



As a general rule, graphite seems to exist not far from 

 the surface, on which its presence may be revealed through 

 fissures, while, in regard to this mineral as well as gold and 

 other ores, indications iu streams guide explorers up to the 

 including rocks, generally quartzy gneiss, in which the 

 mineral IS embedded or diffused. Mr, l)e Mel tells ine that 

 very good plumbago is often found near the surface, but 

 that, as a general rule, the lower the digging operations go 

 the better the quality and the larger the quantity of the 

 mineral. Ui course, the purer the finds are, and the larger 

 the Dia.sscs the better, but a v;.-it to any of the preparing 

 yards in Colombo will show that besides the cost of pro- 

 specting aud mining aud the uncertainty of idtimate suc- 

 cess, a good deal of expense is iuvtlved iu conveying a con- 

 siderable proportion (already noticed) of extraneous matter 

 to Colombo, there to be lianuncred, cut with small axes, 

 picked, sifted, and washed out. 



Still, with all its drawbacks, the plumbago enterprise is 

 valuable tn the country, not only for the revenue it yields 

 but tortile generally remunerative employment it has given 

 to many thousandsof the population (from I .i,0(RI to 20,000 

 meu, women, aud children, probably, including cartmen and 

 carpenters), especially since the period when the collapse 

 of the once great coffee interest led to so much distress 

 in the country. The Kurunegala Administration Keport 

 of 18/3 stated that iu that district alone the plumbago in- 

 dustry had civen emp'oyment to some 5,000 pei'sous. The 

 (ialle report for 1872 estimated that each mine required 

 from two to eight or ten miners, and even up to fifty or 

 sixty, at high wages. At a period when the plumbago in- 

 dustry was at the height of its prosperity, Mr. De Alel and 

 other mine owners had almost concluded an arrangement 

 with Messrs. John Walker & Co. for a light railway line 

 from the mine region to the Govornment railway. De- 

 pression in prices caused this <lesign lo fall through, but i 

 the day caunot be far distant when Kurunegala at least will 

 beounocted with the Government railway system at Pol- 

 gahawela, forty-five miles from (Jolombo. The Western 

 Province plumbago found in the I'asduu Kora!c (a korale 

 which is famous for the quality as well as the quantity of 

 ore it produces) does not come on the railway at Kaiutara 



Once it is loaded iu boats it comes by water all the way to 

 Colombo. 



A return furnished byMr.Pearce shows that nearly one- 

 half of all the plumbago exported from Geyion comes on 

 the railway at various points, maiulv at Polgahawela, the 

 quantity so carried in i(jS2 being no less than 5,612 tons. 

 To show the vicissitudes of the phiinbago enterprise f 

 may quote from th.' Sabarasauiuwa lt.'|,ori; ol lS7o to the 

 eftect that plumbago, which lioinierly sold atK2UUpertou 

 then realized only E90, while the working i xpeuses had 

 considerably increased in consequence of the enhuiited prices 

 of labour. It will be remembered that 1873 was the year 

 m vvhich the change was made to the coUeetiuii of royalty 

 at the Custom-house, iu anticipation of whiuh the great 

 manufactories iu Biiiain and America had picvuled them- 

 selves with stocks of the mineral. Hence ii fall iu exports 

 aud prices. Eleven years subsequently, in IbSo, Ceylon 

 sent away her largest export of plumb..go, hut the depres- 

 sion had even theu .set iu, which led to greatly reduced 

 shipnuuts iu 1884. In the one matter of c.idk-makiug 

 however, the increase in the export uf plumbago during 

 the p.ist five yiars must have largely filled up the void 

 created by the decrease in coffee. Hora, one of our most 

 inferior timbers, cau be utiUzed for plumbago casks and as 

 thocasks are uniformly made to hold a quantity somewhat 

 over a quarter of a ton (.i^ cwt. nett), an average of 4.3,000 

 casks per annum for the p.ist five yea' s, or a lotalinthe quin- 

 queumum of 22.),000, must have given, in their manu- 

 facture, remunerative employment lo a con.Mderable num. 

 ber of carpenters who had previously been largely depend- 

 ent in cask-making for coffee. 



The industry now so wonderfully successful in the 

 i\ or th -"Western Piovince is apparently of quiie recent 

 origin. Gate Mudaiiyar Jayatilleke slates in r. ply to my 

 queries as to whether there were anyihing hen duary, or a 

 system of p.aynient by shares, .amoi gst the minii g J.ass :— 

 " All the plumbago quarries that are now wurked in 

 the Di--trict are pui chased from the Crown. No licenses 

 have ever been applied for or granted to <:ig plumbago. 

 The diggers are paid wages, aud they arc co dies from 

 the feiyaue and Hapitigam Korales, in the Wi stern Pro- 

 vince. Very few Kandyaus are employed, as tley are not 

 han.iy in blasting and excavating any depth of more than 

 15 or 20 feet." 



I may add that but few Tamils are employed in the 

 Ceylon plumbago mines, which are, I believe, i xclusively 

 owned by .Sinhalese, although no doubt the ubiquitous 

 Chetty of Southern India is iuterested in the recovery of 

 advances ni-ide or supplies furnished in some cases. 



To Mr. G. S. Williams, the Acting Government Agent 

 ol the North-"Western Province, 1 had previously been in- 

 debted for responses to my questions, thus : — 



'•The pits are about sixteen miles north-east of Kurunegala 

 oil the pambulla road. There is a good resthouse at about the 

 ILth mile, and the journey in decent weather is easy enough. 

 "The tr.ade altogether failed last \car— 1 mean no dig- 

 ging was done— on account of the faU'iu price, but this year 

 operations have been resumed, aud I am told that about 

 2,000 men are employed. The plumbago is found in rocky 

 ground in which are very large crystals transparent like 

 Derbyshire spar.* De Mel is the owner of the principal 

 pit. The resthouse is at Gokerella. It is nut mentioned in 

 Fyers' Itinerary, but is between Polgola (about a mile 

 beyond it) and Ambanpola. On page 20 of the new edition 

 (18Sl),Part I., you will find Wetakeyyapota, wli ch is 15-65 

 miles from Kuruiifgala, and 0-55 mill' beyond that, or 16-10 

 from Kurunegala, ' minor road to plumbago pit on right.' 

 There areother plumbago pits, someactuallyby the roadside." 

 It thus appears that the best deposits of plumbago at 

 present worked in Ceylon are situated at the 1 ase of the 

 north-westeru portion of the mountain zone. The mineral 

 exists at high elevations, up to Nuw.ara Eliya indeed, but 

 apparently not iu paying form or c]uantity. It would appear 

 that while the veins of plumbago run generally from south 

 to north in the Western Province, their direction in the 

 Kurunegala dirtrictarc from east to w est. 



It seems pcssi hie that if digging for gems aud plumbago 

 coutioues on a large scale, and becomes widts)iread, legis- 

 lation may be needed such as exists regarding the pro- 



* Crystalline quartz, of course, as lime taking the form 

 of spar, seems to be non-existent in Ceylon ? 



