August t, 1887.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
coarse grass that morning when, the wind suddenly 
undertook to change and the fire to burn in the direc- 
tion of tho bungalow, making it most necessary it 
should be put out. He had rather suffered from his 
exertions, and considered the coolies had not backed 
him up well or shown much eagerness to face the fire. 
One man against a biggish fire must feel rather over- 
matched ; still, as I thought of the coolies with their 
bare feet and legs, and with no clothes to speak of, I felt 
as if I could quite understand their hesitation. 
We at once started to see the plantations. The tea is 
planted in rows up the sides of the hills, the plants being 
quite small, kept pruned back to about 3 ft. high. They 
look rather like young orange trees, and are, on the whole 
very hardy ; though the frost sometimes nips the young 
shoots, they quickly recover. They stand the changes of 
climate much better than coffee, having a long tap root, 
while the roots of the coffee plant are nearer the sur- 
face. Bands of women were busy picking off the leaves. 
Many planters (our host among the number) consider 
women to be better pickers than men ; they pick more 
delicately and carefully, and without injuring the shoot 
for the next picking. The three different kinds of tea- 
flowery orange Pekoe, Pekoe and Souchong— all grow 
at the end of the same shoot, orange Pekoe being the 
bud at the end. which is as yet scarcely a leaf, Pekoe the 
next, and Souchong the third ; these the women nip 
neatly off at one pinch of the finger and thumb. Flow- 
ery orange Pekoe is the best and highest priced tea ; it 
is bought up for the Russian market. Pekoe fetches 
the next price, and then Souchong. The best teas only 
were made at the plantation, or, indeed, anywhere in 
Ceylon. Coarser leaves are thrown away, or sold as 
Oongu. 
For leaf-picking good workwomen get about 7d a 
day. Our host was very proud of his pickers, and 
pointed out how clean and tidy they were. As to cleanli- 
ness, being all of a deep brown colour, they would per- 
haps, scarcely show dirt ; but the effect of their bare 
dark limbs against their rose-coloured kombhoys was 
most picturesque. It was always a constant marvel to 
me how the women, not only in Oeylon but all over 
India-, managed to keep themselves so tidily coveredup 
with these kombhoys — merely very long bright-coloured 
cloths — wound round them, first as a skirt, and then 
down across the body in front and thrown over one 
shoulder. It certainly seems to give them occupation, 
as at spare moments they are always arranging them- 
selves; but that appears to be only because it amuses 
them, and not because the tiling really requires it. 
From tea we went on to cinchona plantations. There 
trees grow to the height of young saplings, and have a 
large and handsome leaf. It is, of course, the bark of 
this plant that is valuable. Strange to say, they cannot 
prepare quinine in the island, but when the bark is dried 
it is Bent in bulk to England to be eventually re- 
turned to the East as quinine. The cinchona plant- 
ations round N. Eliya have suffered much this year : 
there was a" harder frost in March than has been 
known for some years, which killed many cinchona trees 
in exposed places or damp ground. Our host had 
prepared himself for such an emergency by planting 
tea between the rows of cinchona. As long as the 
cinchona trees were there, the tea plants remained 
small, being overshadowed ; but they will quickly now 
make good plants being by this time well rooted. It 
is difficult to realise how fast everything grows in this 
country. The cinchona renews its bark and can be 
re-peeled overy eight mouths. Great care has natur- 
ally to be taken to peel only the very outer bark, and 
not to injure the inner ones, or the treo would die, 
killing the golden goose with a vengeance The in- 
stant D man has removed the hark, a woman wraps that 
part of the stem up with grass. She does this at 
thu rate of eight trees for three quarters of a penny, 
tho cutting and bringing the grass being included ; 
so that labour is not dear in Ceylon. A man cams 
about Bd to 9d per diem on the plantations, lint their 
wants are so small in this climate — a little rice and 
a few bananas; lot theni be sure of that and they are 
quite happy spendiug anything that is to the good in 
adorning themselves, with massive silver jewellery. 
Uo Euglish market bas becu overstocked with cin- 
chona bark lately and prices have gone down immense- 
ly. Our host said he had thousands of pounds of 
it in England which he was holding back to sell when 
prices ruled higher. All these plantations are given 
such a desolate, untidy look by the charred stems of 
the old jungle trees being left standing, and their 
trunks lying about in all directions, that I ventured 
to ask my host why he did not have it all cleared 
away and the place made tidy ; but it appeared that 
the roots kept the earth from being washed away, and 
the decaying logs acted as manure, Doubtless he was 
right, as the same thing is done all over the country, 
but from an sesthetic point of view it looks dreary and 
untidy in the extreme. 
The walk was delightful ; a great deal of the jungle on 
this estate is not cleared away, so the path wound along 
the hillside, now through a plantation, now skirting 
thick jungle. Here we saw the iron tree with its bright 
red foliage, and old rhododendrons, grown into regular 
forest trees ; here were orchids innumerable, but, alas, 
not in flower, and tree ferns, and nilloo the favourite 
food, one is told, of the elephant — which no longer 
wanders at its own sweet will over the estate, as it did 
fifteen years ago, before the jungle had been interfered 
with, and when these plantations were not. Pleasanter 
for the proprietor and inhabitants of the place, still, I 
should have liked to have seen one of the huge beasts 
come crashing through, though very likely merely hear- 
ing it would have been enough to send us all flying. To 
make up for the want of elephants, we saw where a 
cheetah had been seen the night before, and where it 
was to be waited for on this coming night ; and we 
were also shown the tree on which a couple of years 
ago another cheetah had been seen by the son of tho 
house and a friend. The friend had been in such a 
hurry, that in pulling out his revolver it went off and 
shot him through the leg instead of the cheetah 
through the heart. 
After tiffin we were taken to see the process of tea- 
making. Given the best quality of tea plants to work 
with — which I understood to be a hybrid between the 
Assam tea plant and an indigenous one — we learnt that 
any difference in the quality of the tea made was some- 
times owing to carelessness or remissness in the mak- 
ing ; therefore, if the price of your tea, as compared 
with that of other people's goes down, you have only 
yourself or your superintendent to blami. Great care, 
nicety, and attention are required ; the exact amount 
of fermentation and of firing appear to be the critical 
points. We saw the green leaves brought in by the 
pickers and placed in layers to wither, which they do 
in about twenty-four to thirty hours. They are then 
put into the rolling machine, which twists and turns 
about, until it has rolled the leaves tightly up. I must 
be excused describing machinery, for I fear I should 
give no very clear idea of it if I attempted to do so. 
After rolling the tea is put into large flat baskets to 
ferment. This is a critical stage of the tea-making, as 
it should be neither over nor under fermented. As 
soon as it shows itself of the proper colour (poor leaf 
which was once green, and that only the day before 
yesterday !), it is put on trays and fired over charcoal. 
Again a delicate process, to judge when it is sufficiently 
fired. Now they begin to separate the three sizes by 
putting the tea through sieves. Orange pekoe, being 
the smallest, drops through, and the remainder is fired 
again ; and once more put iu a sieve, this time a 
coarser one, when the pekoe drops through, and so on. 
This ends the process, but before packing the tea is 
always given a final firing, and then at once, while still 
warm, put down in lead, to keep the aroma strong aud 
fresh. As I saw tho care taken to do this, I could not 
help thinking of the way that everywhere in England 
you see the tea left open and messed about, entirely 
regardless of the escape of this famous aroma. Every- 
thing at the factory was beautifully clean, machinery 
used wherever possible, and the worker's hands always 
being washed. The machinery ami plant for tea-making 
is, of course, a very heavy outlay, as firing as well as 
rolling is now done by it. So from small plautatious 
the leaf is sold in its grwuu statu to tbo large factories 
and prepared \>y them. 
