2 COFFEE PLANTERS’ MANUAL. 
raise it. I have known land, sold in that way, bring 
£20 per acre. £15 and £10 are not uncommon, 
while £5 is frequently bid. In general, however, the 
average price may be set down at about from £2 to 
£3, covering stamps, fees and all cost. At such Gov- 
ernment sales the practice is to pay down on the 
fall of hammer 10 per cent. of the purchase price, 
balance within a month. Or you may buy land at 
Fiscal’s sale, when you may chance to get it very 
cheap: or you may buy it dear if run up. These 
sales are generally the property of insolvents and are 
unreserved: unless the mortgagee step in, and for 
some suitable reason get the sale postponed. In Cey- 
lon of late years, however, such sales have in most 
instances been neither more nor less than a transfer 
to the mortgagee. Such has been the dearth of money 
that there has not, for cultivatec land, been much 
competition. And it is so common for the mortgagee 
to buy in such property, expecially if it owes him 
anything near its value, that other would-be buyers 
often keep away, believing he will buy, and that it 
will be no free sale. In this, however, they are 
sometimes mistaken. There are cases wherein either 
there is no mortgagee, or if there be, he has resolved 
to let it go for what it will bring, and does not at- 
tend. In such instances rare bargains may sometimes 
be had. I have known at such a sale an estate of 
30 acres good coffee within two miles of the high 
road sold for £10. I have known a house in town 
that cost £2,000 in building, sell for £30. And I 
have known a coffee estate with 200 acres in culti- 
vation, sold for £250: the roof on the store of the 
property being worth all the money. I have also 
known an estate of 180 acres sold for £250. It 
yielded yearly for several years about 1,000 ewt. 
coffee, and made it’s new proprietors fortune. Cases 
like these are however of but rare occurren e. They 
are the prizes, so to speak, of Fiscals’ sales. Where 
a sale is known to be unreserved, and where the land 
is in a known and approved district, it will gener- 
ally bring as much at such sale as anywhere else. 
At Fiscal’s sale the purchaser has to pay down 25 
per cent. of the purchase money on the fall of the 
hammer. If not exeeeding £50, the balance is pay- 
able in one month. 
If exceeding £50 and not exceeding £200 in 2 months. 
Exceeding £200 <5 ey £500in 3, 
a £500 —Ci,, »,  £1000in two instal- 
ments within 3 & 6 months. 
1000 in three instalments at 3, 6, & 9 months, 
“The Fiscal’s fees, costs of survey where necessary, 
and advertising, amounting to probably a few pounds. 
