CINNAMON 209 



In one of the largest gardens in Ceylon, at Marandun 

 near Colombo, " The surface is a pure white sand, under 

 which is a deep stratum of rich mould. In some parts 

 of the island, where this earth is deficient, the trees 

 are barren and not worth cutting. In marshy places 

 they thrive no better, but become decrepit, and the 

 bark acquires a bitterness which destroys its sweet and 

 aromatic qualities." l 



An experienced Ceylon cinnamon planter writes in 

 Ferguson's All about Spices : 



Cinnamon is not found growing wild to any great extent 

 in the drier parts of the low country ; whatever may have led 

 the Dutch to choose sandy plains for its cultivation, such lands 

 are certainly not its natural habitat. It is most commonly 

 found as a forest tree at from 1,000 to 2,500 ft. above sea-level, 

 and in those angles of the mountain zone that face the 

 monsoons. It is said to have been found growing at a height of 

 5,000 ft. [Ferguson adds : we have seen plants at 7,000 ft., the 

 clove odour in the leaves pungent enough, but the bark having 

 scarcely a tinge of true cinnamon]. As the plant has only been 

 cultivated to any considerable extent in the sandy plains of 

 the Western Province, sand has of course acquired the name 

 of yielding the finest spice ; the only other land on which it is 

 cultivated being the common cabook (laterite) gravel of the low 

 country, on which it grows most rapidly, but produces a coarser 

 article than on the sand. Whether a fine spice can be produced 

 in a wetter and colder climate by cultivation remains to be 

 tested by experiment. Till this is done we must continue to 

 believe that the best cinnamon is grown on the poorest sand, 

 where there is an average temperature of about 85 and an 

 average rainfall of 1 in. for every degree. This is about the 

 climate of the 50 miles of the coast of the Western Province ; 

 farther south we do not find the sandy plains, and farther north 

 we get into too dry a climate. 



With the rise of price, he says that the villagers 

 planted much in low swampy ground, which produced 

 an inferior quality with a great deal of waste wood. 



Another writer in the Journal of the Eastern 

 Archipelago says, that besides sandy places, a mixture^ 

 of sandy with red soil free from quartz, gravel, or rock 



1 Gardiner's Ceylon. 



P 



