3^8 Voyage of the Novara. 



carried on. In 27 districts there are 404 coffee plantations, 

 covering a surface of 80,950 acres, of which, however, only 

 63,771 acres are really productive. These produced last 

 year, 347,100 cwt., or 5| centners per acre. To this must 

 be added the quantity under cultivation by the natives, who 

 possess about 36,000 acres of coffee plantations, and in the 

 year 1859 alone, exported 180,000 cwt. We may safely 

 assume, therefore, that the cultivation of coffee is on the eve 

 of transforming- this island of Ceylon, from a mere military 

 station of England, into one of the most flourishing colonies of 

 the British Empire. Twenty years ago there were exported 

 barely 60,000 centners, worth £180,000. In September, 

 1858, the export exceeded 600,000 cwt., which represented 

 on the spot a value of £1,500,000 sterling. " When capital 

 and labour shall have become more plentiful," remarked to 

 us a by no means over-sanguine resident, " Ceylon will have 

 in its mountain districts 240,000 acres planted with coffee 

 trees, yielding at the lowest estimate, 1,680,000 cwt. of 

 coffee annually." Here, as among the high table-lands 

 of Guatemala and Costa Rica, we have the reassuring 

 evidence how one of the most important plants for the 

 civilized man can be profitably cultivated, without having 

 recourse to the blighting influences of slave-labour, at the 

 same time making the lands in which it is produced both rich 

 and prosperous.* 



* The coffee-tree frequently suffers, especially in Ceylon, from an insect called the 

 coffee-bug {Lecanimn Coffece) ; as, however, this troublesome insect has only infested 



