jvtit I, isse.i 



THE TROPICAL AGRlCUtTlJRIST. 



82 i 



PLANTING IN' UVA ON "DATS OF OLD" 



AND THE PEESENT TIME. 

 (A letter from Mr. Irvine to the Provluchil AfiPtitJ. 

 Badulla, 22nd April 18SG. 

 3i. King Esq., Govemuieut Agent Province of Uv.a. 

 My Dear King, — Referring to our various convers- 

 ations and more particularly to your letter of 17th 

 iiist. I have ouly been a short time in Badulla and 

 without books or papers for reference but the following 

 may be of some use to you with reference to the past and 

 present condition of your Province of Uva, and as 

 I had promised to write to the press on this sub- 

 ject before I saw you and had prepared ranch of 

 what 1 am now writing I will send copy of this letter 

 for publication. 



You ask me as to the TJva coffee crops from 185.5 to 

 lt>7.5, a period of 20 years and 30 years from this date. My 

 own knowledge of Uva only dates back to l.s62; but 

 the Ceylon Directory gives returns of native coffee 

 for 20 jears from 18i9 to 1869 the largest crops be- 

 ing those of 1SB5 and ISHS, respectively 21-4,806 cvvt. 

 and 218,58-1 cwt., the average price of native coffee 

 during the same period being £1 17s 6d, but for 

 the last 15 years of this period the average 

 was Xi sterling per cwt. and no less than 

 .t'6,986,321 sterling was distributed amongst the 

 natives of which the Uva villagers got their full 

 share, and I maintain that Uva produced half the 

 native crop of the island, taking the annual average 

 roundly at 1.60,(100 cwt. will give to Uva 75,000 cwt. 

 which at Badulla prices, say 30s, = £112,750. It was 

 about the year 1868 or 1869 that Mr. Keid first called 

 attentiou to leaf-disease and by 1873 the disease had 

 obtained firm hold of the village cofl'ee and the decad- 

 ence became much more rapid than on plantation 

 coffee. And I may here nu'iition that prior to 1873 the 

 Uva coffee crops were simply enormous : in 1864 

 Kirklees estate about 200 acres of coffee gave upwards 

 of 20,000 bushr-ls parchment coffee ; and Cahagalla, 

 Oodowerre, Kotogodds and Old Spring Valley gave 

 equally large crops, and the native coffee bore propor- 

 tionately. It was ouly between 1860 and 1870 that 

 Badulla, Hiputale and Madulsima were really opeued 

 up by Europeans. Previous to this the estates actually ' 

 giving crops were Haputale, Cahagalla, Old .Spring 

 Valley, Ifotogodde, Oodowerre and Oetumhe (i|uite 

 young) Waywelheeu.!, Gowrakelle, Nahawelle, Cana- 

 verella Gleualpin (,'[uitt; youug), Ball.Hgalla (.(iiite 

 young), Pa.--ara or Gonakelle, Wewessc and Debeilda, 

 and the acn age of these estates in bearing was very 

 small comparatively. Of the Udapus.sellawa estate.? 

 there were uuly Kirklees. Tulloes, St. Margarets, 

 Alnwick an 1 jierhaps Stafford; the.se were all the 

 estates onlais sidi- NuwaraEliya, so thai it is really 

 within the lust 20 or 25 years the bulk of the Kuro- 

 pean estates .verc openedand planted. butit was between 

 the years y.ni mention, viz. ls;.5 to 1875, that the native 

 BOffoe iuterst was in its greatest prcsperity. Every 

 native villa;,.! was a thicket of coffee, growing uaturally 

 without CH.e and without cultivation. The town of 

 Badulla n.is a wilderness of coftee iuchiding the 

 Govemmeiil Agents grounds; the church, burial-ground 

 and all the adjoining land where the gaol now st.ands, 

 the temple lands, the land in front of the Govern- 

 ment Agent's house and all the village gardens were 

 one mass of magnificent coffee, and there must bave 

 been growing within what are now the i^ravets of 

 the town of B.adnlla not less than from ':.(¥) to Coil 

 acres of coffee, yielding at loa;it 5 cwt. per acre, the 

 trees were literally laden to breaking with tlieir crop, 

 and Badulla was no way different from any village 

 in Uva. I do not think 75,000 cwt. too high an estim- 

 ate for the crop over a period of 20 years: some 

 years it must have been greatly in excess of this, anil 

 I believe it to have been in excess of the K.andyan 

 crop. The native trade of Uva centring in Badulla 

 was at this time peculiar. The ouly road by which a 

 cart could with difficulty reach Badulla was by the 

 Nuwara Eliya road. The whole of the rice and other 

 supplies for the troops then stationed in Badulla, as 

 well as the towns people and plantation labourers 

 was carried ou pack bulloclis from Catticaloa and 



Hambantota, and a considerable pOiLiou of tlie rice 

 was Batticaloa grown rice, but rao.'it of it was im- 

 ported direct from India m native vessels, the Moor 

 traders purchased this ricp or bartered for it, Uva 

 aative grown coffee at the seaports and sent it to 

 Badulla on pack bullocks where the rice was again 

 exchanged with the Badulla merchants for native 

 coffee, which on the return of the lavalams to Batti- 

 caloa or Hambantota was again bartered or sold to 

 the owners of native vessels, and much of the 

 native crop of Uva was shipped direct to India, 

 and am doubtful if much of it ever passed throu>»h 

 the Custom House at all. The native trade at 

 this time was a large and remunerative one. Kice, 

 curry-stuff and sundries from India to Batticaloa and 

 Hambantotta sent into the interior and bartered for 

 Uva coffee, and this with salt from Hambantotta formed 

 principally the return cargo of the native vessels. 

 This trade is now e.\tiiict and the present poverty- 

 stricken condition of the villagers may readily be 

 understood when you consider that the native coff<-e 

 was worth fully 30s in Badulla and the Moormen 

 made large advances against the growing crop, the 

 villagers were paid partly in money, partly iu cloth, 

 fish, curry-stuff and the ordinary necessaries of village 

 hfe, and, as I have already shown, even at the low 

 estimate of 75,000 cwt. native coffee at 30s, the villag- 

 ers have lost by the extinction of their coffee 

 £112,5(30 sterling annually ; half of this was probably 

 spent in Euglish imported goods, cotton and other 

 cloths, common cutlery, hardware, and crockery of the 

 commonest sorts. (To digress from the immediate text 

 of my letter this is a matter of equally serious im- 

 port to the British mauufacturer, first; there is the 

 actual loss of trade but there is even more than this, 

 the skilled workman is made out of the boy appren- 

 tice and it is only in markets like this that the 

 " prentice hand " can find the purchaser for his work 

 and if you will go thrcjugh the bazaar and exam- 

 ine the various articles for sale, especially cotton 

 goods, you will be astonished to find how far Ger- 

 many has ousted the British manufacturer on his own 

 ground— (pardon the digression.) As I have already said 

 the \yhole of the money or coffee is gone anil the 

 coasting trnile with all its various ramifications is ex- 

 tinct, .lust at the time that native coffee proper 

 beg.au to decline, what were called native coffee gardens 

 rapidly sprung up along the roads and more access- 

 ible places; they were in extent from two or three acres 

 np to fifty ; they were generally the property of 

 estate kanganies, artizans and others who had saved 

 a little money on estates and who got money readily 

 from the money-lenders and perhaps from "less legi- 

 timate .sources. During the high price of coffee these 

 •gardens were as well cultivated as anv European 

 estates, hut as crops failed they graduallv fell into 

 the hands of the money-lender, who in turn found 

 them so nnremunerative, that they have nearly all 

 become abandoned; and this sonrce of revenue" has 

 also been entirely lost. It is only the very large pro- 

 fits made by the native traders on the old system 

 of double barter which has enabled them to coutiuue 

 tr.ide at all, and many have succumbed. Is it therefore 

 any wonder that the villagers cannot pay their taxes? 

 And what makes ni.atters worse is that the paddy 

 crops have greatly fallen off both iu price and in 

 yield. The cause of falling off in price for the small 

 qn.aiitily of native paddy available for sale is two- 

 fold ; first, the villager will take an .advance .against 

 his growing crops at any price rather than have his 

 field sold for taxes; second, the demand for hill paddy 

 was confined principally to Europeans who kept 

 horses and poultry, and this for olnious reasons has 

 fallen off and bazaar prices .are regulated by the fall 

 iu price of imported grain. The condition of tli'e peasan - 

 try in Uva at present is very similar to that of the Irish 

 peasantry after the potatoe famine; and if here arc no 

 great landed proprietors to eject their tenants, I faucy 

 the Sinhalese villager finds Government quite as hard 

 a taskmaster. The Ceylon Government are everyday 

 selling up the peasantry for their land tax or even for 

 road tax. (This points a moral to our present Irish legis- 

 lation.) So poor are the Uva yJUagers that they cannot 



