and Magazine of the Ceylon Agricultural Society.— Jan., 1910. 85 



look like garters, and have had to shave them 

 off with a razor. The most loathsome, though, 

 iB one quite flat and the size of a threepenny bit. 

 It is found on big game, and is of a dirty grey 

 colour, and can trite through linen, and when it 

 does so, it feels like the prick of a red-hot blunt 

 needle. There are also many other kinds, and 

 one I have taken off a tiger which was as big as 

 a thrush's egg. Dog ticks seem never to attack 

 one, though they are brought home by the score. 

 I have noticed in skinning big game that some 

 sorts of tick seem unable to relinquish their 

 grip of their dead host, but remain attached to 

 the skin until they rot off. It is difficult to re- 

 move a tick when he fastens on one, as the 

 head keeps a very determined grip, and parts 

 company with its body sooner than leave go, 

 and, there remaining, sets up a very nasty and 

 lingering sore. 



UP TO THE MIDDLE OF MAY WE PLANTERS 

 WERE UNHAPPY 



— that is to say, nine out of every ten Europeans 

 in the province ; for except the few officials and 

 railway men, all whites here are concerned with 

 tea in some way or other. The" early rains had 

 been extraordinarily late and scanty so far ; the 

 drought had lasted since last October, every- 

 thing in consequence was very backward, and 

 estate managers were wondering how their esti- 

 mated crops were to be obtained. 



Even a shortage of the usual crop means 

 very great loss, as the English capital invested 

 in tea is over fifteen millions, and a short crop 

 does not mean a proportionately reduced ex- 

 penditure on the estates, as the cultivation has 

 to be kept up at the same standard of excellence, 

 the need for this in a bad season being greater 

 indeed than in a normal one, and we cannot dis- 

 charge any of our labour force, shortage of lab- 

 our being in normal times a great crux with us. 

 Writing now in July, we are having a very trying 

 year. The 



RAINFALL HAS BEEN EXTRAORDINARILY SHORT, 



and everyone is doing badly and making less tea 

 than usual. I am already 11 tons behind, and 

 still going back, and, as there is no retrench- 

 ment possible in management, we have to find 

 full work for our coolies, whether it be remune- 

 rative or not. The shortage of labour is be- 

 coming more acute year by year. 



EVERY COOLIE HAS TO BE IMPORTED FROM 

 OTHER PARTS OF INDIA 



at the expense of the garden, and may amount 

 to £10 per adult. The average garden is about 

 600 acres— say, a square mile — and there should 

 be at least one-and-a-half cooly per acre for 

 decently efficient cultivation. Matters have not 

 been improved by the recent repeal of a part 

 of the Special Labour Law, which allowed of 

 a coolie being put under contract to serve for 

 a certain period, with penalties for non-per- 

 formance, drunkenness, and absconding. Per 

 contra, the employer was and is bound to pro- 

 vide wages, food at fixed prices and good quality, 

 proper housing, and especially a good and 

 pure water supply, with medical attendance and 

 maintenance when sick, and the coolies start 

 work quite free of debt of any kind to their 

 importer— the garden. AH estates are regularly 



inspected by the district officials, and due per 

 formance of their part of the now unilateral 

 contract is rigidly enforced. Since the abovo 

 repeal, we have hardly any hold on the coolies 

 except by a cumbrous civil suit, which is only 

 possible if a cash advance has been made and 

 the coolie refuses to work at all. Considering 

 that every coolie has been and still has to be 

 imported by us— the native Assamese being 

 quite useless — it seems rather hard that we 

 should have no security that they will remain 

 long enough on the estate to prove remuner- 

 ative. We cannot in any way recover the cost 

 of their importation from them. They start 

 free from that. 



THEN THE GOVERNMENT STARTS UP, BIDDING 

 FOR OUR COOLIES, 



much having been talked about State coloni- 

 sation of Grown lands, but nothing effected, 

 except in the way of inducing the men whose 

 passages we have paid for, to take up Gov- 

 ernment waste lands, and the result is that 

 enormous areas of such land have been taken 

 up by ex-tea garden coolies, amounting now 

 to 120,000 acres and more, these men being 

 appreciated by the authorities as the best 

 ryots in the province, and from them the 

 Government draws a large and increasing re- 

 venue. There are still huge tracts of richly 

 fertile lands hungering for tillage, and more 

 capable of giving certain returns than the major 

 portion of India itself. First and last we have 

 imported more than a million people from India, 

 nearly all of whom have ultimately decided to 

 finally settle in the province, and this we still 

 continue to do at the rate of many thousands 

 annually. 



THE NATIVE OF ASSAM IS USELESS; 



practically none will work save as clerks or on 

 some such billet ; they have a most inordinate 

 idea of their own superiority over the rest of 

 the races of mankind. Heaven knows for what 

 reason, for they are lazy, dishonest, and in no 

 capacity reliable. The Bengali, on the other 

 hand, though in moral character no better and 

 perhaps, because of his mental superiority, re- 

 quiring more intelligent supervision, will 'and 

 does work. It is customary to laugh at Babu 

 English, and their stilted style and use of half- 

 comprehended Johnsonian phrase is productive 

 of most ludicrous results, of which I could 

 of course, produce many perhaps better ex- 

 amples than the following : "Sir, I beg to crave 

 a small hole in the secret side of your benevol- 

 ence wherein I may creep and thence derive sus- 

 tenance for self and starving family,'' &c. But 

 per contra, apart from our officials, not one in a 

 hundred Europeans knows how to address a re- 

 spectable native without unwittingly insulting 

 him by the use of terms grossly inappropriate! 

 We are 



JUST COMPLETING A LITTLE WAR ON THE 

 FRONTIER, 



The Dallas, a Himalayan tribe of ancient "head- 

 hunters" who in the past have been in the 

 habit of raiding the Assam plains much to their 

 own advantage, came down on a Miri village in 

 the Darrang District a short time since ac- 

 quiring some fresh heads, and carrying off a few 



