SECTION X. 



CULTIVATION IN CEYLON. 



IN 1824, Sir Edward Barnes and Sir George Bird com- 

 menced coffee-planting in Ceylon on a large scale. Others 

 followed gradually, but the real rush for land dates from 

 1833. There are now 250,000 acres owned by coffee-planters, 

 of which 100,000 are cleared and cultivated. 



In Ceylon coffee succeeds best at an elevation from 1200 

 to 4800 feet ; the quantity, generally speaking, lessening, but 

 the quality improving with the elevation. By the natives a 

 little of inferior description is grown in the low country. In 

 1855 there were about 150 estates belonging to Europeans, 

 comprising 30,000 acres of cultivated ground, to which con- 

 siderable additions have since been made. 400,000 cwt. was 

 exported in 1853, and 783,393 cwt. in 1863. 



The railroad forming from Colombo to Kandy, and the 

 opening up of new roads, have rendered more land accessible, 

 and the large clearances made in the forest at the high ele- 

 vations will probably so improve the climate of those 

 localities that a still further addition to the available land 

 will be obtained. It is, therefore, not too much to expect 

 the export, which in the last five years has on the average 

 exceeded 630,000 cwt. per annum, will in less than a quarter 

 of a century be more than doubled. In the fourteen years 

 ending with 1862, Ceylon has sent into the markets of the 

 world the following quantity of coffee : 



cwts. 



Plantation . . 4,625,995 of the value of 11,310,518 

 Native growth . 1,945,623 3,492,290 



6,571,618 14,802,808 



