4O COFFEE I ITS CULTIVATION AND PROFIT. 



than business integrity, brought up a band of 

 bazaar loafers and station hangers-on for my early 

 building operations, the result was eminently un- 

 pleasant all round. 



The coolies of certain districts or special 

 villages, it may be will be adepts at peculiar 

 operations ; and in such they may generally be 

 employed for contract work, under the most credit- 

 able and best-known master who offers his services. 

 Of course sureties may be taken, by all means, 

 when they can be had ; but in India, at least, the 

 necessary legal formalities are tedious and elaborate. 

 One thing is certain, that with the natives of all 

 lands but with none more so than the simple, 

 yet keen, natives of the Empire a straightforward 

 bearing, and an honest interest in their welfare, 

 is one of the readiest roads to success and satis- 

 faction. The coolie gauges his master's mind and 

 weaknesses with a woman's shrewdness. It is a 

 peculiarity of his race to be what the ungracious 

 would term a sycophant; yet he appreciates kind- 

 ness, and will repay encouragement and consideration 

 with fidelity and zeal. 



When the young planter has got his men together 

 twenty, perhaps, with their allowance of women 

 and children, for the first two hundred acres he 

 opens, and more in proportion then comes the 

 careful and skilful working of them, his aims being : 

 (i) To get as much work out of them as he 

 reasonably can without (2) being unduly harsh, for 



