TROPICAL EXPLOITATION 67 
was at its height, no less than 78,000 were disposed of. 
To quote Emerson Tennent, ‘‘ The Governor and the 
Council, the Military, the Judges, the Clergy, and one- 
half the Civil Servants penetrated the hills and became 
purchasers of Crown lands . . . capitalists from Eng- 
land arrived by every packet . . . so dazzling was the 
prospect that expenditure was unlimited; and its 
profusion was only equalled by the ignorance and 
inexperience of those to whom it was entrusted. The 
rush for land was only paralleled by the movement 
towards the mines of California and Australia, but with 
this painful difference, that the enthusiasts in Ceylon, 
instead of thronging to disinter, were hurrying to bury 
their gold.” 
Soon after this there was the inevitable collapse, 
but by 1855 the industry had recovered, and was con- 
ducted on practical lines, forming the staple industry 
of Ceylon until the eighties. Almost a million 
hundredweights of coffee were exported in 1875. But 
the writing was already upon the wall ; a fungus disease 
was beginning to spread, was disregarded until too 
late, and had as a result the complete collapse of the 
industry, hastened and made more complete by the 
competition of Java and Brazil. 
Cinchona illustrates several other features in the 
general study of tropical exploitation. The tree is a 
native of the Andes, especially of Peru. The febri- 
fugal properties of its astringent bark, due to the fact 
that it contains the alkaloid quinine, were known to the 
natives before the arrival of Europeans, and became 
familiar to the Jesuit missionaries, one of whom cured 
the Countess of Chinchon of a fever by its use. The 
