122 CEYLON COFFEES. 



valued at ;^75, 000,000, fully one-half of which is retained 

 for home consumption, the balance being shipped to 

 England and France, which are the two next largest 

 consumers of India coffee, although in both countries 

 it is subject to excessively heavy duties. The average 

 product per acre is only about 350 pounds, but the 

 drought having affected the plantations would of itself 

 sufficiently account for the diminished exports if the 

 leaf disease and borer did not also help to keep down 

 the yield. 



The history of coffee cultivation in the island of Cey- 

 lon is one fraught with interest and full of instructive 

 lessons, which, since the year 1845, has assumed a 

 position of great and ever-increasing importance. Al- 

 though coffee is claimed to have been an article of 

 growth and export from Ceylon even as far back as the time 

 of the Portuguese, it only grew wild there without any 

 attempt at cultivation. Small patches of it were to be 

 found around the Kandyan villages, growing in wild 

 luxuriance, the berries being gathered before they were 

 ripe and imperfectly cured, seldom possessed much flavor, 

 they were but lightly esteemed as an article of commerce. 

 Its systematic cultivation was first commenced in 1824, 

 by Sir E. Barnes, the then governor, who hoped by his 

 example to introduce coffee planting by Europeans into 

 the island. Up to 1834, however, public attention does 

 not seem to have been occupied with the industry, but in 

 that year the falling off in supplies from other countries 

 brought capitalists into the field, and when, in 1836, the 

 duty in England was reduced to six pence per pound, a 

 great impulse was given to coffee planting in Ceylon. 

 During that and the following year about 7,000 acres of the 



