450 CAEDAMOM-CULTIVATION. Chap. XXVI. 



plants in the soil begin to show their heads all over the 

 cleared ground during the first rains of the monsoon, and 

 before the end of the rainy season they grow two or three 

 feet. The ground is then carefully cleared of weeds, and left 

 to itself for a year. In October, twenty months after the 

 felling of the great tree, the cardamom-plants are the height 

 of a man, and the ground is again carefully and thoroughly 

 cleared. In the following April the low fruit-bearing 

 branches shoot forth, and are soon covered with clusters of 

 flowers, and afterwards with capsules. Five months after- 

 wards, in October, the first crop is gathered, and a fall 

 harvest is collected in the following year. The harvests 

 continue for six or seven years, when they begin to fail, and 

 another large tree must be cut down in some other locality, 

 so as to let the light in upon a new crop. 



The harvest takes place in October, when the grass is very 

 high and sharp, sorely cutting the hands, feet, and faces 

 of the people. It is also covered with innumerable large 

 greedy leeches. The cultivators pick the cardamom capsules 

 from the branches, and convey them to a temporary hut, 

 where the women fill the bags with cardamoms, and carry 

 them home, sometimes to distances of ten or twelve miles. 

 Some families wiU gather 20 to 30 maunds annually, worth 

 from 600 to 1000 Es.^ 



This method of cardamom cultivation must be considered 

 injurious to the conservancy of fine timber in the forests, but, 

 on the other hand, the crops themselves are very valuable, 

 and bring in a considerable revenue. But there is another 

 kind of cultivation carried on in these vast forests on the 

 western slopes of the ghauts, which is far more prejudicial 

 to the production of valuable timber-trees. This is called 

 kumari, and punam in Malabar. It has been altogether 



• Moegling's Coorg, pp. 74-77 ; also Buchanan's Travels, ii. p. 511, and 

 Drury's Useful Plants of India. 



