46 COFFEE : ITS CULTIVATION AND PROFIT. 



than that of the European. This shows itself in 

 many ways. He will get an attack of fever or 

 dysentery, it may be, and, lying down, inform his 

 friends he is going to die ; and he too often keeps 

 this melancholy resolve, apparently lacking the 

 resolution to hold his vital spark in. Again, he 

 is for the most part hopelessly unambitious, except 

 when famine spurs him, whence come much of 

 the planter's " labour difficulties." He knows he 

 can subsist for a week away in his own fertile 

 plains on the amount of " raggee," " paddy," 

 " cumboo," or other grain purchasable by four 

 annas (equal to fivepence) ; and that being a day's 

 pay on most estates, he saves a few rupees, and 

 then returns to his hut to lie in the sun and take 

 his daily measure of pulse amongst children and 

 friends an existence which fulfils all ^his ideas 

 of life. 



The jungle has no attraction for him unless 

 he is kept in it by the magnetism of an English- 

 man's presence. It is a region of mist and terror, 

 not only held by the fever mists, and ravaged 

 (in his excited lowland imagination) by wild beasts, 

 but also peopled by fearsome tribes of ghouls and 

 goblins ; no wonder he dreads the dark wooded 

 mountains, ascends them reluctantly and quits 

 them hurriedly (too often with his " advances " 

 unrepaid) for hospitable and familiar plains! Times 

 of famine tell greatly against the prosperity of an 

 estate, for labour is then scarce, precarious, and 



