8 COCONUT PLANTER'S MANUAL. 



no coconut oil was, in the first quarter of the last century, exported from 

 Ceylon to Europe.* To India between 1806 and 1813 there were 

 annually sent about three millions of coconuts, 28,000 measures of oil, 

 and 3,500 cwt. of copra, basides 20,000 cwt. of coir. The Arabs 

 must have taught the Sinhalese, how to prepare coir or cordage from 

 the fibre of the coconut about the 13th or 14th century. The manu- 

 facture of coir (said to be best from unripe nuts) from the husk of 

 the coconut acquired great importance in the time of the Dutch, as 

 many as 3 million pounds — of cordage, chiefly — being supplied and 

 exported principally to Batavia and the Cape of C4ood Hope. The 

 port captains of Colombo and Galle were allowed to manufacture or 

 sell on their own account: the former 600,000 lb. and the latter 

 500,000 lb. of coir cordage. In the early days of the British the 

 manufacture fell oft", the natives considering the work only fit for low 

 castes ; but at the present day it affords extensive employment to the 

 inhabitants on the coast, especially in the South and West. 



Systematic coco-palm cultivation by Colonists in Ceylon was' 

 first commenced in the Jaffna and Batticaloa districts in 1841, and a 

 vast amount of money was lost over it from first to last, many 

 of the plantations having passed out of the original proprietors' hands 

 for a. trifling percentage of their cost. In 1853, Mr. A. O. Brodie, 

 Assistant Agent at Puttalam, reported that in the Chilaw-Puttalam 

 district the cultivation was rapidly extending. From 1840 to 

 1850 was the era of planting by Eui-opeans ; then came a blank of 



* In 1820 Captain Boyd, an Aberdeen navigator, in command of an 

 East Indian trader (the partner afterwards in the firm of Acland, Boyd & 

 Co.) is said to have taken home the first cargo of coconut oil ever exported 

 from Ceylon. There was, at that time, no market for this article in 

 England, and when the cargo arrived home there was some difficulty in 

 persuading any one to purchase it. At length some relatives of the captain, 

 proprietors of a wool milJ, reported on the fitness of the oil for lubricating 

 purposes, and a sale was effected. In 1832 or 1853 Acland, Boyd & Co. 

 established the first oil mill worked by steam, and the export trade in 

 coconut oil then became a favourite mode of utilising the savings of civilians 

 and military men. Master Attendant, then Capt., Steuart also took a 

 cargo ot coconut oil home about 1820, utilising plantain stems to fill up the 

 interstices between the casks. Another account has it that Governor fcsir 

 K. Wilmot Horton established the first coconut-oil mills worked by steam 

 power at Colombo and made the first shipment of oil on Government account 

 to London and that Messrs. Acland, Boyd & Co. then bought the mills (St. 

 Sebastian) and got out an engineer of their own, the late Mr. Kudd, Senr. 

 In the Government Calendar lor 1835, one entry in the Directory portion 

 for Colombo is:— "The Steam Engine in the charge of Mr, H. Kudd". 

 Some years after Messrs. Wilson & Archer started the Belmont (now 

 Hultsdorf) mills, Mr. David Wilson's father having invented a process for 

 separating the fat from the oleine of the coconut oil, so making it (coconut 

 oil) to keep liquid in cold ; this gave a great impetus to the trade. 



