i^e 



'tut 'miSPlCkL AGKlCULTUKib'i. 



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give even one meal of rice to their children daily; they 

 are living ou roots and yams and any jungle produce they 

 can get. I myself have seena " wee thing that could 

 baldly toddle'' given a roasted corn cob for its noon- 

 day meal (i>erhaps the only meal of tlie day), and this 

 was considered good. The wonder to me is, not that 

 crime is rampant in the province, but the astonishing 

 thing is that it is not more so. Another thing wliich 

 has militated and greatly heli)ed to impoverish the 

 ordinary villager is the almost entire stoppage of con- 

 tract Work on European estates. Formerly the villagers 

 in the vicinity of coffee plantations could always get 

 work at felling or cutting roiils and drains or similar 

 work; there is now almost no work for Sinhalese on the 

 estates, in fact most of the estates work their coolies 

 short time and the coolies themselves do not spend 

 a tenth of the money in the villages they used to 

 do, for egg.s and fowls and garden produce; there are 

 not half the number of coolies in the first place, 

 and Rauiasami working short time with few pick- 

 ings, hag, like master, to economise on the small 

 pittance he receives. It may be true, and to a certan 

 extent it is true, that the peasantry are lazy and do 

 not make the most of their fields, but life after their 

 own fashion was so easy when coffee grew freely 

 without care or cultivation and cropped till the ground 

 was red under the trees with fallen berries, and when 

 money could always be got for a few days' easy work 

 on a neighbouring estalie. tliey have lost much of the 

 skill as well as the energy to well cultivate their 

 fleldsl ; another thing is that for years past murrain 

 has been decimating the cattle and buffaloes, and 

 more especially the baffaloes, which alone are used 

 to plough the paddy fields. I am told some villagers 

 have lost their buffaloes altogether, and it is only by 

 one village community helping- another that buffaloes 

 can bo got to plough the rice fields arid often the " sow- 

 ing"is so late that the prospect of crop is of the smallest, 

 and now the remnant of the cattle are being sold, 

 to the butcher to pay taxes, and keep the owner 

 from gaol or from having his small 'holding" sold. 

 1 hoard of a good bullock being sold the other day 

 for R'2 to pay poll-tax — four shillings for a bullock — 

 and when summing up all this I add that the 

 BaduUa gaol is full of an ever-increased number 

 of prisoners, principally for minor offences or non- 

 payment of poll-tax. It exhibits a very dreadful and 

 distressing state of affairs. Here (1 speak of Uva 

 generally) we have what was once a populous 

 and prosperous community reduced to the most 

 abject poverty principally from the loss of their 

 btaple crop by a dispensation of God, over which no 

 man had any control, and the loss of their cattle by 

 seurraiu and disease ; the trade of Upper Uva to the 

 ma hag also been cut off by the opening-up of new 

 outlets, and the native coasting trade between India 

 and Ceylon has also been destroyed partly by British 

 India steamers and the *' Serendib " taking the 

 produce direct to Colombo, but principally by the 

 failure of the staple crop for export which has rendered 

 this trade of almost no value. With steamboats on 

 the Coast carrying the little trade of Lower Uva 

 direct to Colombo, and the Kandyan railroads with 

 their converging cart-roads drawing everything to 

 Colombo, the whole wealth and energy of the country 

 is being centralized in the capital, and Uva, naturally 

 the richest Province m the island, is practically shut 

 out and cut oil from Colombo or from any benefit 

 which may flow from centralization owing to the 

 difficulty of transport over our mountain roads, and 

 the little wealth and enterprize left on Uva is rapidly 

 being drawn away whilst the peasantry are starving ; 

 and unless Government step in at once to the relief 

 of the people, *' as Alipota now is so will Hadulla 

 Jrapidly become," and the Goveruuient Agent will 

 have to administer and collect the revemies of an almost 

 deserted country. 



No one now doubt the success of tea planting in 

 Uva, it is a reorganized fact, and I anticipate that 

 the prosperity of the planting interest will be fully 

 re-established within the next three years, lliere is 

 much good coffee left in Uva on high estates where 

 rultivation has'bcon kept up, and what has been lost in 

 iioffsc will be fully made up iu tea wd ciucboua, and 



retui-ned prosperity to the planter- means a large 

 help by villagers, and is the first step to that full 

 prosperity— but the great native question of the 

 day is, how is the extinct native coffee and healthy 

 native trade of Uva to be replaced or renewed V I 

 have frequently been asked . if tea could be 

 made to replace native coffee, and I can answer 

 this question largely in the affirmative. Although 

 tea will never grow " sJiumma " like coffee about the 

 honse under the shade of jak and other trees, it 

 must be grown in the open, pruned and cultivated. Tea 

 is a much hardier plant than coffee, but to manu- 

 facture tea the plant must be so treated that it will 

 throw out a succulent flush every eight or ten days 

 during the season. I have already seen some small 

 native tea gardens on the Kandy side which promise 

 well, and the cultivation is well adapted for small 

 gardens along the roads such as I have already de- 

 scribed as coffee gardens, and I fully anticipate before 

 long that the whole of the road from Badulla to 

 Lunugalla will be a succession of native tea 

 gardens each witli Prater's hand-roller and curing 

 on chulas with charcoal which I find is easily procured 

 and cheap; and the burning of charcoal will be one 

 little help to the villagers if the new forest ordin- 

 ance does not step in and prevent the people burning 

 charcoal in the chenas. I have also no doubt it Gov- 

 ernment will distribute good tea seed that a large 

 number of the more intelligent villagers will grow tea 

 in their gardens, but cattle trespass and want of fencing 

 is a sad drawback to planting. The product which 

 I would most like to see largely planted as being 

 sure and certain to produce immediate relief would 

 bo the iutroluetion of cotton, and every encourage- 

 ment should be given to the vill-agers to plant cotton 

 in the chenas and about their houses ; the fact that 

 cotton has failed in several places in Ceylon, does 

 not necessarily prove that the plant cannot be grown 

 remuneratively in Uva. I have seen the plant 

 growing in the greatest luxuriance up to 4,000 or 

 5,000 feet elevation, and it is well-known that till re- 

 cently cotton was largely grown and manufactured iu 

 Eatticaloa, and Badulla was the principal distributing 

 point for these goods. For many years I never saw 

 any towels, napkins, or table cloths in an Uva bun- 

 galow but those made in Batticaloa, and the natives 

 used principally Batticaloa cloths and caraboys ; this 

 trade has also gone, principally owing to the strin- 

 gent rules regulating the burning of chenas, but 

 the bill climate of Uva is fur better adapted 

 to the cultivation of cotton than the lowcouutry. 

 Cotton requires plenty of rain but if it gets raiu 

 when the boles are bursting it is utterly ruined, and 

 hero is whore the perfection of the Uva climate 

 comes in. I have just risen from my writing to 

 measure a young cotton plant, it is about nine 

 months planted, is growing ou anything but rich 

 soil, and h.as h;<d no manure ; it is ten feet iu height 

 and has l.iO well-formed bolea in dilterent stages 

 of maturity and plenty of blossom to come, the 

 spiing rains of March and .\pril h;»vo sent the plant 

 into blossom and the boles will burst during the 

 driest months of the year the plant is j>crennial 

 however and will blossom and po^i =^1' the year round. 

 The cotton refercd to is Egyptian. I got the seed 

 from a friend many years ago who brought the 

 seed from Egypt and I planted it iu the garden 

 at Oodowcrre, from there the ssed has been dis- 

 tributed over the country and there has been no 

 detericration in the plant though fully twenty yearo 

 since I first got the seed. A friend took home n 

 sample, it was very highly valued in Liverpool at 

 the time and said to be equal to the best Sea 

 Islands cotton — this was of course a hand picked 

 sample. Here is a product which may be cultivated 

 to any extent, brought to Badulla to bo baled and 

 the seed pressed for oil and cake. The common tree 

 cotton may al.so be grown iu the valleys to 

 any extant. Once valueless as a coramciciil pro- 

 duct it is now most valuable for upholstery. 

 Tin; .<eed of this plant is al.so valuable for oil and 

 caUr. Tobacco of fine quality can be grown to any ex- 

 ten: and so can castor-oil nr. 1 i variety of products, 

 but to '.hiukof carrying cut any of luy projectp (or 



