THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [November i, 1888. 
338 
district that if the Matale Eailway were in the 
hands of a Private Company, a good many sources 
Of traffic at present untouched, would speedily be 
tapped by the offer of special rates of freight. 
"Fruit" in great variety — we have never tasted 
such delicious loquats as on Poengalla, and the 
Matale Valley generally is famous for its fruit — 
could so be secured for trains that are now not 
laden nearly enough and other minor products would 
also help a good deal. 
DAYS OF OLD WHEN KELEBOKKA, KNUCKLES AND RAN GALA 
WERE " HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS " — SPLENDID TEA 
ON THE KING OF KANDY's HIGHLAND GARDEN — TIMBER 
AND FUEL ABUNDANT GENERALLY IN THE NORTHERN DIS- 
TRICTS — LANDSLIPS IN 1888, AND IN 1835 AS DES- 
CRIBED BY MAJOR FORBES — MR. ANDREW NICOL SENDING 
RANGALA COOLIES FOR RICE TO KANDY FORTY YEARS 
AGO — A VISIT TO THE DUMBARA VALLEY : MR. VOLLAR'S 
TOBACCO FIELDS AND CURING SHEDS— EXPORTS OF 
TOBACCO AND THE TOBACCO SYNDICATE— TOBACCO 
IN DELI — DUMBARA VEGETABLE MARKET. 
In "days of old" before the British conquest 
the forests and highlands of the country now 
known as the Kelebokka, Knuckles and Kangala 
planting distriots must have been the happy hunt- 
ing ground of the Kandyan Chiefs and their 
retainers who occupied the wide extending, 
flultivated Lower Dumbara valleys. In the same 
way on the other side of the country, the Kandyans 
of Kotmale were in the habit of migrating for 
two months at a time to live on the Lindula 
and Agra patanas and hunt the wild deer in 
the " Wilderness of the Peak." These undoubt- 
edly may have been happy and profitable days 
for the native huntsmen in the " merrie greenwood ;" 
but there can be no question of the greater good 
bestowed through the employment and food pro- 
vided by the cultivation of these waste forest 
jungles, on thousands of Sinhalese as well as 
Tamils. On the borders of Kelebokka, about the 
dividing line between it and the Knuckles, and 
overlooking those falls on the Hoolooganga recently 
immortalized in one of Boyd's stories in the Literary 
Register, there is a comparatively level expanse of 
uplands, known in Sinhalese legend as the King 
of Kandy's Garden or Highland Camping Ground. 
During all the coffee era, this comparatively levei 
expanse remained crown property and grew up 
into low chena ; but a few years ago the block was 
purchased by the proprietors of the adjoining estate 
(Allacolla) and as a young tea plantation on 
virgin soil, it is in a fair way to equal any clear- 
ing of the age in the country. Finer tea than 
the two year old on the flat could not be wished 
for anywhere of the age. As a general rule, 
tea on the old estates in the Kelebokka 
Knuckles andBangala districts gets on more slowly 
than on tho other side of Kandy and Nawalapitiya. 
But every year will see an improvement, until 
''bumper crops" come when the " virgin subsoil" 
is fully entered, and meantime nearly all the 
planters in these Northern districts have a great 
advantage over many of their brethren in Pussel- 
lawa, Dimbula, Ac, in having an ample fuel 
supply available. 
At the burst of last south-west monsoon a 
Knuckles planter who had got his clearings in good 
order, only to find himself the victim of some 
very extensive and expensive landslips, penned to 
us a terrible and unmitigated indictment of 
Providence. He evidently felt like Dr. Jessopp's 
Sussex yeoman that "Providence had a great deal 
to answer for," and that "the sooner One above Pro- 
vidence interfered and put a stop to his working, the 
better." Our correspondent, the Knuckles planter, 
probably thought that such an experience as his in 
1888, was unprecedented; but we have come across an 
incident related by Major Forbes, which shows 
that even in his day, before planters had cut a 
tree in the Kandyan forests, similar catastrophe 
involving serious loss of life were not unheard of. 
We quote as follows :— 
" In the last days of the month of November 1835, 
the rains exceeded in violence and duration any- 
thing of the kind I had hitherto witnessed, and did 
great damage in the south-western portion of the 
island. Soon after the commencement of this de- 
luge, the thickness of the clouds, and the close- 
ness of the rain, had contracted the visible horizon 
to a few yards around the house where I resided ; 
and the darkness rendered it difficult to read at mid- 
day. Before the second evening every ravine was 
filled, and each streamlet had become a river in 
size, and a torrent in rapidity : down two of these, 
that passed my quarters, the dead carcases of buffa- 
loes and bullocks were rolling and tumbling; oc- 
casionally some one, still alive, and lately swept 
off, might be seen hurried along while still plun- 
ging and struggling in hopeless strife with the raging 
waters. The soil of the mountain near us, softened 
and saturated by the continued floods, had no longer 
tenacity to retain the great stones or loose masses 
of rock that rested on its steep sides and arched 
summit : they shifted, then rushed with resistless 
force, crashing through the forest, or thundering 
over the bare rocks until they reached the level 
grounds. So appalling was the continued darkness 
and the sound of falling rocks, that the villages 
along the base of the mountain were abandoned 
until the rain ceased, and the sun appeared, on the 
fifth day. 
"On the fourth of these melancholy days, a man, 
lame and severely bruised, presented himself be- 
fore me, and, pointing to the Hunasgiri range of 
mountains, groaned out that the side of a hill had 
shifted into the valley and entombed his wife and 
three children : his small property, his house, his 
garden, and his rice-field were also overwhelmed 
by the same catastrophe. His account of it was, 
that, while resting in the verandah of his house, 
he was awaked by an unusual noise, and could just 
distinguish, through the gloom, stones rolling past, 
and felt his cottage shaking from the battering of 
those that struck against it. He opened the door, 
alarmed his family, then fled ; and had only ad- 
vanced a few yards, when he perceived an immense 
mass of earth and trees and rocks pass over the 
house, which thus became the tomb of his family. 
The unfortunate man had received severe contu- 
sions from the stones that bounded down the hill, 
preceding the great body of earth borne forward on 
water that had accumulated in some crevice of 
the mountain, and produced the calamity. Great 
damage was done by this flood to roads, bridges, and 
rice-fields ; the destruction of cattle was immense, 
and the loss of human life considerable, from 
accidents similar to that which I have just related. 
"Amongst other changes caused in the face of the 
country by the rains, I saw a garden (in whioh 
stood several full-sized coconut trees) that had bid- 
den farewell for ever to its owner's bounds, and 
now seemed perfectly at rest on his neighbour's 
property ; a glorious opportunity for litigation, of 
which it is not likely two Kandians would fail 
to take advantage." 
Considering the settled well-roaded condition of 
the Northern districts now-a-days, it is diffioult 
to credit the story of some of the drawbacks to 
