Iv INTRODUCLION. 
Wattie” is no fiction, but falls short of facts that; 
have really happered, not only in one but in many 
instances. 
Had all the planters’ who have been ruined by 
undertaking more than they could do, with the means 
they could command, confined their operations. 
within the bounds of their own resources, fewer part-. 
ners of agency firms would have retired with large 
fortunes, and Ceylon would have been accountable for- 
fewer broken hearts and broken lives, but I suppose. 
such things will happen, while the desire for wealth 
outruns the slow process of patient industry, and 
capitalists lend, on terms of their own making, which 
they well know must in nearly every case assure 
the ruin of the borrower, by gradually bringing into. 
their pockets all he possesses.* 
LOW-COUNTRY PLANTATIONS AND NEW 
PRODUCTS. 
As the cultivation of Tea, Liberian Coffee, Cacao, &c. 
at low elevations, has widened the area of the piant-. 
ing enterprise, it will become necessary for such plant- 
ers as go into these cultivations to apply themselves 
to the study of the conditions of success. I have some 
knowledge both of the mountain zone in the region 
of Arabian coffee and of the cultivation of lands from 
sea level up to 1000 feet of elevation, and I cannot 
hold out any encouragement to the hope that low coun- 
ry work will be cheaper than mountain cultivation. 
Among the waste lands of the louw-country there is. 
very little forest, and the soil of much that exists 
has ben left by the natives as too poor for chena. 
The districts in which forest with soil of good quality 
is to be found are generally unhealthy, and sparsely 
populated, and though there is no want of people who 
would undertake their cultivation, it is just as well 
* We are bound to say, however, that there is an- 
other side to this picture: there are cases in which 
agents having trusted planters with capital, lose it 
through bad or injudicious work, the security in a 
plantation which jerhaps ought never to have been 
opened, being worse than useless. COMPILERS. 
