154 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [September i, 1887. 
production" rises up or is conjured to strike terror 
to their souls. Comfort, too, is to be derived from 
the fact of the superior quality of o»r insular pro- 
duct and its as yet wonderful immunity from enemies 
of the nature of those which between 1847 and 1886 
have proved so destructive, so largely fatal indeed, 
to the once flourishing staple of our export com- 
merce. May all that was prosperous and nothing 
of what was adverse in the history of Old King 
Coffee, distinguish the rule, perpetual let us hope, of 
the new sovereign of the " new products " of Ceylon. 
Before passing from the subject of tea, I feel bound 
+o observe that little doubt can be entertained of 
the fact that trials of this cosmopolitan plant on 
an extended scale by Ceylon planters in the period 
with which I am dealing, were hindered by the in- 
formation conveyed to Sir Emerson Tennent by the 
Bros. Worms and by Tennent embodied in his great 
work on Ceylon, that the result of the Rothschild 
experiment of introducing first tea and then tea- 
makers from China, was that each pound of manu- 
factured leaf cost them £5 sterling. In view of that 
statement we were all long in the habit of saying — 
" Tea can be grown in OeyloN but not to pay.'' 
Thus, apart from the fact that while coffee prospered 
its profits (and at certain periods and in certain 
cases these profits were very large) were so much 
in excess of what could possibly be expected from 
tea, there seemed to be no inducement to engage in 
the cultivation of the latter. Mr. Maurice Worms 
having spent some time in China, it was only natural 
that the seed with which he and his elder brother 
tried their experiment should have been imported 
from the country which had long been deemed the 
original home of the tea plant. So in most of the 
experiments the species or variety of tea available 
was Qhina. To Mr. Llewellyn, a Calcutta gentleman, 
who owned land in Dolosbage, I believe, belongs 
the credit of having first introduced indigenous 
Assam tea, decendants of his bushes or rather 
trees, if not some of the originals being still 
in existence. Before their value as seed-bearers 
was appreciated, many of the big trees were cut 
down and converted into rafters for buildings. To 
Mr. Harrison, of Messrs. Keir, Dundas & Co., 
probably belongs the merit of the first introduction, 
on an appreciable scale, of seed of the Assam 
Hybrid, the value of which as both prolific and 
hardy had been so fully recognized, before tea 
planting was extensively taken up, in Ceylon that, 
fortunately, our planters had in this matter, as in 
others, the benefit of Indian experience, so that with 
the fewest exceptions possible, the Ceylon tea 
plantations possess the best jat of plants from Assam: 
either indigenous or high quality hybrid. Without 
disputing the proposition, that, in order fully to enjoy 
the delicate and delicious flavor of tea, the infusion 
ought to be drunk without sugar or milk, it must be 
affirmed that as an article of human diet the value, 
of tea is immensely increased by the fact that by 
the majority of those who use it, it is employed 
as a medium to convey into the system such nutriti- 
ous substances as milk and sugar. Of milk I 
need not speak, except to say that Ceylon milk is 
generally watery in an abnormal sense, so that the 
milk vendors of our capital city have least cause to 
complain of a delayed water supply. But sugar, 
especially in its refined form, is not only difficult 
to adulterate (apart from the absence of temptation 
owing to its now extreme cheapness), but those who 
have studied the subject of nutrition are agreed, 
that if a human being were condemned to the use 
of only a single article of food, life could be longer 
sustained on migar than on ony other one substance, 
milk forming no exception. It is not for us, in 
Ceylon, therefore, to join our friends of the West 
Indian colonies, British Guiana and Mauritius, in 
denouncing the policy of certain European nations 
who by means of bounties out of their general 
taxation help their sugar growers and refiners to 
give British subjects, at homo and in the colonies, 
chf-ap sugar, at a cost of many millions to such 
nations themselves. For, in the period of my review, 
experiments were tried in such widely separated 
portions of th,e island, as Dumbara, Negombo, Matara 
and Kalutara, on a scale large enough and for a 
sufficiently protracted number of years, to prove 
conclusively in the estimation of those concerned and 
intelligent lookers on, that while the sugarcane can 
be grown (and it grows luxuriantly in many localities 
in Ceylon) it cannot be grown for sugar-making on 
a large scale, so as to yield a commercial profit. 
As that is what we long and, as the event has 
proved, erroneously thought and Baid regarding tea, 
of course I feel that even in the face of all I know 
of capital and labour wasted and hearts broken in 
the attempts to grow the sweet cane and manu- 
facture sugar from it in Ceylon, I would hesitate to 
say that the prospect of a successful experiment in 
the future, is hopeless. Circumstances may arise, 
which will justify the expenditure of capital on 
guano and other fertilizing substances, calculated to 
correct comparative poverty of soil and excess of 
moisture in our atmosphere, such as rendered success 
in the past impossible, in consequence of the canes 
yielding a maximum of water and a minimum of 
saccharine matter. But in view of the subsidized 
competition mentioned, I do not suppose any person, 
who has a regard to remunerative returns, will act on 
the belief that the time for a revival of experiments 
which forty years ago ended so disastrously has yet 
arrived. My first introduction to sugar manufacture 
was in Dumbara in May 1841 (45J years ago), and 
I still vividly remember the anxious warning of my 
old and valued friend Mr. Robert Tytler (then a 
young and blooming lad, now, alas, gone from scenes 
of enterprize in which he took so active a part) 
not to touch the film of sugar which wal forming 
over the top of a mass of boiling liquid. Half a 
dozen years subsequently, I saw the superintendent 
of an estate in the Negombo district watching a 
caldron of boiling and bubbling molasses, which he 
complained, he could by no means induce to crys- 
tallize. That seemed the great difficulty in Ceylon, 
although Mr. Macgregor, Lord Elphinstone's Super- 
intendent on Paradua estate succeeded in producing 
white loaves, one of which he brought to the Observer 
Office, as a proof of what could be done; yet the 
enterprize paid LordElphinstone no better than others, 
and his lands which once grew sugar now grow tea. 
For the present, at least, we must consent to a 
division of labour, in supplying the ingredients of 
the cup which, with no intoxicating property, cheers 
and strengthens the wearied frame and replaces 
wasted tissue. We in Ceylon must be contented to 
supply the world with the best possible tea, leaving 
it to our friends of the canefields of other tropical 
lands to compete with the beet farmers of continental 
Europe, in providing the best and cheapest sugar. 
To show what mistakes the most careful and 
intelligent man can make, I may mention that my 
late friend Dr. Elliott with all his local knowledge 
and his great sagacity deliberately preferred a trial 
of sugar cultivation near Negombo to going into 
coffee even when he knew of the splendid returns 
yielded by such early estates as Hantane and Oodo- 
wella. Happily for him and his family, the estate 
on which he had spent, all his savings was purchased 
on behalf of Messrs. Arbuthnot & Co., of Madras, 
by an old west Indian sugar planter, Mr. Fraser, 
who also owned "Charlie's Hope" near Kalutara. 
All Mr. Fraser's experience and skill could not make 
sugar a success and the Negombo lands only became 
really valuable in the hands of Dr. Elliott and 
others when planted with coconut palms, the expansion 
of which form of cultivation, I may say, received 
an immense impetus in the period I am dealing 
with. So did cinnamon, which has now for many 
years suffered like so much else from overproduction. 
Unlike cinnamon, coconut cultivation must always 
have a steady and moderately profitable value from 
the enormous extent to which its chief product is 
used as a staple food of the fast in«*easing indigenous 
Eopulation. Cinnamon, apart from any \ alue it may 
ave as a drug, is mainly a luxury for the rich : while 
the fruits and other numerous and varied products of 
the coconut palms supply the necessities of the 
multitude who must be classed as poor or just above 
the reach of want. Before passing away from the 
subject of sugar cultivation in Ceylon, I ougfyt to 
