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CHAPTER III. 



LABOUR AND LABOURERS. 



IT is a stern fact, unfortunately impossible to ignore, 

 that to grow Coffee we must employ labour, and 

 to a large extent. 



Natives of most warm countries and certainly 

 of Lower India are physically inferior to the work- 

 ing classes of the invigorating north. Doctors tell 

 us the blood of dark races is thinner there are 

 fewer red corpuscules in a given quantity than with 

 European. For this, as for other reasons, native 

 vital energy is lower and their powers less than in 

 our own and other white races. 



Mr. Monier Williams' recent volume, " Modern 

 India," should be in the hands of every Coffee 

 planter. He tells us, in a single paragraph, the 

 history and characteristics of the chief races of 

 labourers with whom the Indian planter comes in 

 contact : 



" Southern India, not including Aryan Orissa, is peopled 

 first by the great Dravidian races (so called from Dravida, 

 the name given by the Sanskrit speakers to the southern part 

 of the Peninsula), whose immigrations into India in successive 

 waves from some part of Central Asia immediately preceded 

 those of the Aryans. These Dravidians are of course quite 

 distinct from the Aryans ; their skin is generally much darker, 

 and the languages they speak belong to what is called the South 



