aio 
THE. TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [September i, 1888. 
a big water-wheel driving the machinery in a well- 
furnished Factory. But in connection with his 
watercourse, Mr. Fraser has very skilfully and 
wisely carried irrigation channels round the sides 
of his knolls from which tiny streams run down 
to the drier flats below, imparting freshness to 
the thirsty tea at a variety of points when we 
were there. These irrigating arrangements, in our 
opinion, render the success of Bandarapolla doubly 
secure. As to transport, better facilities could not 
be wished, with a cart-road from the factory door 
4 miles to Matale station, while for riding, across 
the river, the distance is little more than 2 miles. 
I should not omit to mention the sight of a 
splendid nursery of tobacco plants, which, as Mr. 
Fraser said, had cost him for seed no more than 
R30; while to secure as many tea plants would 
probably require an outlay of B.3,000 in seed! 
Mr. Fraser is very strong in his belief that 
tobacco might very freely be cultivated by the 
Laggala villagers, the leaf being taken to a central 
factory for sale. Mr. Ingleton (as representing 
Messrs. Meyer <fcCo.) should see to this. Mean- 
time, in the lower valley of Matale, there is ano- 
ther product about to claim to attention of the 
Sinhalese in — Cotton. 
( To be continued. ) 
A LITTLE EASTEEN COURT AT GLASGOW 
AND WHAT IT TEACHES. 
[From a Correspondent.] 
" Surely we are the most practical people on the 
face of the earth!" Such were the words I heard 
spoken by a well-to-do citizen of the northern capital 
of industry within the exhibition building. I felt 
inclined to contradict him as regards International 
Shows. Were it so, there would not be the dense 
crowds gazing on the show-cases of jewellery and 
gold and silver, silks and laces from' foreign 
countries ; there would be more people occupied in 
examining those exhibits which instruct and im- 
prove. Why is the Indian Court so much thronged, 
and why is the Ceylon Court so little frequented ? 
In the one is a huge collection of rich and costly 
curios ; in the other is a marvellous gathering of 
instructive products, showing what industry and 
application can extract from the earth under the 
most trying conditions. Yet these things fail to 
attract as do articles made only for the eye. 
The world has heard a good deal of talk about 
Ceylon tea and of its excellence, but the world know3 
very little— it may be said next to nothing — about 
the island in which that tea is grown, nor should I 
be able to write of it now as I do were it not for the 
appearance of a compact, prettily-illustrated 
" Handbook of Ceylon Products and Industries," 
— the only one published in the Exhibition, in 
which a good deal is told in a very brief space. 
Looking at the diminutive models of Sinhalese 
villagers engaged in noosing elephants in a kraal, 
one would not have dreamt that in the remote past, 
when our ancestors dwelt in mud hovels, the kings 
of that " utmost Indian Isle " resided in vast palaces 
of Btone, richly carved and ornamented with glitter- 
ing gems, and that they invaded India with a great 
army and sacked many cities ; nor would it be 
thought probable that the tanks, and embankments, 
and palaces, constructed two thousand years ago 
in that little-known island, were of such magnitude 
that the labour bestowed upon them if paid for at 
the current valuo of such work, would equal in 
amount the entire capital expended upon all the 
English railways, viz., .£(500,000,000, yet so it is, and 
but for thin little handbook, I should not have 
heard of such things. Strange that Cook with his 
globe-trotting tourists has not found his way to these 
marvellous cities of the dead. 
Nor less strange is it that much of what passes 
current regarding things in Ceylon is without founda- 
tion in fact. Even the lady artist whose charming 
pictures adorn the walls of the Ceylon Court, bright 
in colouring of tropical scenery, in her description 
speaks of Buddhist priests, Buddhist worship and 
Buddhist temples, yet in fact there are no priests, 
no worship, and no temples ! There are Buddhist 
mendicants, but priest would indicate some form of 
ritual and worship — which have no existence. At his 
death, Buddha passed out of existence, and though 
he left discourses on morality, he left no form of 
prayer. There is no word in the Sinhalese language 
for " temple,"— the natives calling the buildings in 
which figures of their teacher, who was never a God, 
are kept, " Image-houses." The Dagobas, of which 
a model is shown in the Court, were often of vast 
size — one as lofty as our own Cathedral of St. Paul's 
— but they are not temples, they are simply relic 
shrines. And when offerings of flowers, and fruit and 
rice are placed before Buddha's figure, these things 
are offered not in worship, but simply as an earnest 
of the votary's desire to live up to the precepts of 
the great teacher of the eastern world. 
More than this, the little handbook tells us that it 
was on the coast of Ceylon that Sindbad the Sailor 
was wrecked, as related by him in the Arabian Nights 
Entertainments ; that the identical Valley of Dia- 
monds, whence he brought away much treasure, is 
still to be found in a particular district, amidst most 
romantic scenery, as rich as ever in precious stones, 
rubies, sapphires, amethysts, etc., of which brilliant 
specimens are shown by Mr. Hayward, who has him- 
self worked in the ruby mines of Sindbad's Island. 
And what are the teachings of this bright, this most 
interesting little Court ? We learn from the exhibits 
and the "handbook" how the glittering things of 
the remote past have in this modern era of steam and 
electricity, given place to products and industries 
more likely to advantage mankind than gems and 
pearls and spices ; and in their place, or, of greater 
importance, we find tea, coffee, and cocoa for the 
breakfast table, cinchona for the dispensary, coir 
for the floor, oil for the soap-maker, perfumes for the 
toilet, and all these things growing in importance. 
It should deeply interest the citizens of the north 
to know, that the pioneers of the planting industry 
of Ceylon were Scotchmen, hailing from Banff, 
Aberdeen, and Crimond. The name of Robert Boyd 
Tytler, the father of Ceylon planters, was long a house- 
hold word in the Island, and to this day the Scotch 
element is strong wherever planting is carried on. 
If it were true that we are really a practical 
people, the fact should be remembered that whilst 
the Chinaman makes his tea by hand in the rudest 
fashion, the Ceylon planters employ expensive 
machinery for every process in tea making, the 
leaf never being touched by hand after gathering, 
and that in the purchase of this machinery, large 
sums of money are expended with Scotch and 
English firms of manufacturers. 
There is yet one other lesson to be learnt by a 
perusal of the " Ceylon Handbook," a lesson which 
is curious as it is original, but then in the East 
we must look for paradoxes in economies as well 
as in the some other things. In the Court there 
is a model of a native mill for extracting oil from 
copra, the dried kernel of the coconut, a very rude 
affair worked by two bullocks. It works slowly 
but effectively, and so economically, that, although 
costly and powerful steam machinery for making 
the oil has been erected in Ceylon, the little clumsy 
bullock-mill holds its own, and continues to creak 
and grind as it creaked and ground half a cen- 
tury ago. In most other countries, Europeans with 
I Bteara power have killed all native manufactures, 
