CULTIVATIOK IN CEYLON, 93 



tBe end o£ 1877, we calculate that more than thirty million 

 pounds sterling ($150,000,000) have been paid in wages to immi- 

 grant coolies from Southern India, apai-t from the very consider- 

 able amount given to Elandyan woodcutters, Siuhalese laborers 

 in certain districts, carpenters, artisans, cartmen, etc., and indi- 

 xeetly to the coffee-store employes in Colombo, the women and 

 children who pick, and the men who prepare and pack, as well as 

 those who transport and ship our staple. We are probably on 

 the safe side in saying that from fifty to sixty million pounds 

 sterling ($250,000,000 to $300,000,000) may be taken as an 

 approximation to the total amount of British capital introduced 

 into Ceylon in connection with coffee, while our returns show an 

 export of ' Plantation coffee ' in the same period of about seven- 

 teen million hundredweights, valued by the Customs at forty- 

 eight million pounds sterling ($240,000,000), but really worth a 

 good deal more. 



" Our calculation is that from each acre of coffee land opened 

 here, five native men, women, and children (of Ceylon or South- 

 ern India) directly or indirectly derive their means of subsist- 

 ence." 



According to the same authority, the total valuation of invest- 

 ment in the coffee industry of the island (including factories, 

 stores, and offices in town) approached, in 1877, the sum of four- 

 teen millions of pounds sterling ($70,000,000). 



" In the young districts, between Great Western and Adam's 

 Peak, over 7,000 acres have been added to the cultivated area 

 since last year, averaging sixty new coffee pl^itations annually 

 since 1869, equalling 114 square miles, and costing in ihe conver- 

 sion at least one and a-half million pounds sterling. There is a 

 large extent of young coffee not yet yielding a first good crop, 

 estimated at 54,000 acres under four years of age, or very nearly 

 equal to the total in bearing in 1866." 



Between June, 1875, and November, 1877, there was an addir 

 tion of 22,639 acres to the extent of land opened and cultivated 

 In coffee. 



The large and improved estates are almost all situated in the 

 hUl region of the island, coffee prospering best in Ceylon, as well 

 as in other countries, at an elevation of from 2,000 to 4,000 feet. 



