ENEMIES. 131 



in the world, while Ceylon scarcely ranks for one- 

 eighteenth of that quantity ; and in the Brazils, as 

 yet, the dreaded leaf-disease has not made its 

 appearance much felt. New fields are being opened 

 out every day. Java and Sumatra already produce 

 more than twice the outturn of Ceylon. India is 

 running it very close. Coffee planting is one of the 

 attractions in the new English venture in Borneo ; 

 and the Commissioner of British Burmah is doing 

 all he can to make Tavoy into a Coffee district. 



Altogether the planters have had a very hard 

 time of late years. The brightest spot on their 

 horizon is the hopes which Tea holds out to them 

 of retrieving their fortunes. A correspondent of 

 an Indian paper from which we have already 

 quoted some facts says, speaking of the Ceylon 

 planters : 



" The success of their Tea enterprise is very remarkable : 

 one estate between Colombo and Kandy is said to have given 

 in one year 1,000 Ibs. of dry leaf to the acre. It may help your 

 readers to appreciate this if I mention that it is found worth 

 while to cultivate estates in the Nilgiris with so low a yield 

 as 150 Ibs., and that 400 Ibs. is considered an excellent result 

 in the north of India. What makes this outturn the more 

 remarkable is, that the Mariawatti Estate, as it is called, 

 is planted on land formerly occupied by Coffee, but which had 

 been abandoned and allowed to grow into jungle. We could, 

 unhappily, find plenty of that kind of land (hitherto supposed 

 to be utterly valueless) in Wynaad, and as this district has 

 been pronounced most suitable for Tea, which has done very 

 well in one or two small plantations already existing, there 

 are only two obstacles in our way the want of a steady 

 supply of labour, and the remarkable tightness of the local 



