March i, i888.] THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. 
595 
obtaining accurate information from recent and reli- 
able sources. 
But in these days of facile travelling, kuowledge 
of a country is obtained rather by personal observation 
than from books, and apart from its special attrac- 
tions, which bring many visitors annually to Ceylon, 
it is the centre towards which the great ocean high- 
ways from north, south, east, and west converge, and 
the grand tour of the nineteenth century is incomplete 
without a visit to Oeylon. Hut it is not from mere 
book reading nor from chance observation that Oeylon 
has become a household word in the Mother Country. 
The island offers no livelihoo I to the British emigrant 
in the common accept ition of tho word, for under a 
tropical sun the Anglo-Saxon cannot compete in 
manual labour with the rice-fed native ; bua it has 
been for forty years a favourite field for the immi- 
gration of the younger sons of the upper and middle 
classes, and has afforded to many a solution (though 
from unavoidable causes, as will be shown after- 
wards, of late somewhat bitter) of the increasingly 
perplexing question, " What shall we do with our 
boys ? " and there is not a town — nay, hardly a village 
nor a parish — in the United Kingdom which doos not 
in some way claim nlfinity with Oeylon. 
But apart from the accideut of local and familiar 
connection, the subject of my remarks to-night con- 
veys a wider and more general interest ; it is a history 
how one of tho most prosperous agricultural enter- 
prises tho world has ever seen, was at its zenith, smitten 
by a fatal and incurable pest ; how from the ashes of 
this enterprise there has risen another, which promises 
to be equally prosperous and far larger, and how by 
force of circumstances a latent source of imperial 
wealth, resulting in a large reciprocal trade between 
Mother Country and Colony has thus been developed. 
It is a history of a brave struggle and a victorious 
result : a history convoying lessons of caution and 
lessons of hope, from which I venture to think the 
landowners and farmers of Kuglaud might learn some- 
thing. 
During tho 300 years' tenancy of Ceylon by the 
Portuguese and Dutch, nothing was done to develop 
what has since proved to be the real wealth of the 
island. Both Portuguese and Dutch Governments 
were trade m inopolists ; and though a system of barter 
was carried on with the Kaudyans, neither nation 
ever gained a footing in the Kandyan provinces. 
The European w is arbitrary and dictatorial, the Kandy- 
an highlander sullen and suspicious ; and it was not 
until after 25 years of British rule, that tho Kandyan 
prejudice to tho foreigner having been overcome, and a 
grand trunk road constructed from Colombo into tho 
heart of tho Kandyan country, attention could be 
drawn to tho suitability of the hills of Cevlon as a field 
for the profitable investment of that surplus British en- 
ergy and capital which even then had to find an 
outlet abroad. Coffee, which had been to some ex- 
tent cultivated under the Dutch rule, attracted 
chiefly, because its cultivation could bo carrio 1 out in 
tho high lands, in a climate congenial to European 
life; and Sir Kdward Barnes, the then Governor of 
Ceylon, himself formed a cotfeo plantation on tho 
hills near Kandy in 1825. Sugar, cotton, nutmegs, 
oiniiamon, tobaoco, cocoanuts wore all planted with 
varyiug suocosa ; but attention became gradually cen- 
tred upon oolfoe, and though for 10 or 12 years, 
owing to the ditliculties always attendant upon pion- 
eering, the advance was slow, it was certain. Land 
was taken up in vinous pirn of the island, and 
thus the inDst suittblo localities wore discovered. 
About this time, also, the abolition of slavery in 
Mm Wost Indies, where Coffoo had been largely 
produced, and the eouH«qu»ut labour difficulties, ac- 
companied by a largo reduction in the import duty 
on coffee into the I nitel Kui.lom, gave a stinu 
Iuh to cultivation in Ceylon and oipitnl nu I miurgy 
wero dinwn from W'eit to K wt. Si signul wan tho 
surcuss attendant upon the formation of some plan- 
tation., ho mtrvollo'iH — n»y, almost fabul mi — tho 
rnportit of tho profit*, that a fovor was produced. 
Soli, lorn, nailers, olorgvmau, civil Horv.uiU plunged into 
olloo plautiug with every pouny they had or oouhl 
borrow, and accompanied, as all such fevers are, by 
injudicious selection and extravagaut mismanagement, 
who could wonder that a heavy fall in tho price of 
coffee in Europe, and a consequent cessation of cre- 
dit to plant and cultivate estates, produced a crisis 
which checked and threatened to stiflo the coffee 
enterprise of Ceylon; but as in tho case of Indian 
tea, so from the coffee crisis in Ceylon there emerged 
a body of men poorer, perhaps, but wiser; and now, 
founded upon experience taught by misfortune, the 
enterprise steadily grew, though subject, of course, to 
all the vicissitudes incidental to tropical agriculture, 
aud in 1870 and the two preceding years the aver- 
age annual value of tho coffee exported from Oeylon 
was rouudly 4,000,0002. 
What coffoe planting did for Oeylon is best told 
in the words of Sir William Gregory, the Governor 
of Ceylon from 1872 to 1877, who says : — " What, I 
may ask, is the basis of the whole prosperity of 
Oeylon but the planting enterprise? What gave me 
the surplus revenues by which I was able to make 
roads and bridges all over the island, to make grants 
for education, aud to promote the general industry 
and enterprise of the island from Jaffna to Gall, but 
the result of the capital aud energy engaged in the 
cultivation of coffee. " But when the prospects of the 
coffee enterprise seemed brightest, when the exports 
wero largest, when capital and energy were freely flow- 
ing to Ceylon, when the waste lands offered for sale 
by Government were fetching prices but a few years 
ago unthought of, when the result of intelligent experi- 
ence had developed a system of high cultivation which 
promised to add length of days to large returns, a fun- 
gus, known now as the Hemilaia vastatrix, was noticed 
on an estate to be attacking the leaves of the coffee 
trees. Rapidly the pest spread, and before a year 
was over it was perceptible all over the coffee distriots 
of the island. The minute spores of the fungus 
attached themselves to the underside of the leaf, and 
as it developed the loaf ceased to perform its func- 
tions, and died ; and the energy of the tree, which 
hitherto had been available for fruit-bearing, was now 
devoted to the constant reproduction of leaf. The 
export tables of coffee from Ceylon from this date 
show more plainly than anything else the ravages of 
the disease. It first beoame perceptible in altomate 
short crops ; but the short crop became gradually 
shorter, and in time became chronic, in spite of a 
large increase of coffee-produciug land, for planting 
was being vigorously prosecuted at this titnu; aud 
though every effort which practice, aided by science, 
can suggest has been and is being made, the exports 
of coffee have shrunk to a fifth of their former 
dimensions. Other pests, attacking trees with con. 
stitutions already weakened by leaf disease, have in 
many cases completed the ruin of coffee estates, but 
not in all, for there are still a few distriots, in 
several districts estates, and on many estates _ fields, 
in which, owing to superior condition of soil aud 
climate, coffee can still be cultivated remuneratively, 
and as the disease, which at first use 1 to sweep un- 
checked over vast areas of coffee, is certainly mitiga- 
ted by the varied cultivation now existent, there it 
reason to hope that coffee may for niauy years oon- 
Knue to figure as an export. 
With the exception of a few English planters who 
— attracted in some instances by love of sport, which 
they had more abuudant opportunity of gratifyiug, 
in others by a drier an 1, to some constitutions, a 
more healthful climato — preferred remaining in the 
low couutry, engage 1 in the cultivation of cocoanuts 
and cinuamon, tho whole Anglo-Saxon energy, from 
|s.i; to is. 17, was concentrated on the cultivation of 
coffee; and though many other economic plant*, suoh 
as too, cocoa, cinchona, and tobacco, had been grown 
experimentally, but little effort had been made to 
m ike the cultivation of t'i plants remunerative. 
Tea is said to havo bean introduced into Cuyb'i by 
the Dutch Govornmont, and sixty year» ago thu China 
variety of tho plant was growing in tho Botanic 
Gardens, Oeylon. About 1H|2 it seems to havo been 
tried on » somawhat largo scale, but without practical 
reitulti, and Sir BtMNM Toniiout writes . — " The tea 
