March i, 1889.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
611 
last month, stopped all peeling, and there is nothing 
doing but pruning and weeding. Owing to very 
unsatisfactory seasons for the last two years I 
anticipate a short crop of both cinnamon and 
coconuts this year, and a riso in the price of the 
latter ; as for the former I despair of any marked 
improvement in prices. I am glad to observe by 
the Customs returns that the quantity of chips 
exported this year to date is only about half 
what it was at the same time last year. I wonder 
what can be the cause of this. Is it that the 
months of May and June last yoar were so favour- 
able for peeling, that coarse wood, whioh in other 
years would have gone to swoll the chips, was 
made into quill cinnamon ? The health of the 
people is better than it was during December and 
.January, when dysentery in many villages and fever 
in all prevailed to a serious extent. Colds and 
coughs are common, and a few cases of fever. A 
little raiu would be welcome, as pastures are look- 
ing brown. 
+ 
A PIONEER COLONIST: COFFEE AND 
COCONUTS IN THE EARLY DAYS. 
We take to ourselves blame for not referring in 
our Overland Summary to the departure from 
our shores by the P. & 0. S. S. "Rosetta" of 
one of the pioneers of coffee (and coconut) plant- 
ing and the founder of a mercantile house in 
Colombo, Mr. Andrew Nicol. Mr. Nicol's career 
has been as varied and as racy of our planting 
Boil as any one of his compeers in the "forties" 
and " fifties." His favorite district was Rangala, 
whore he owned, or shared in, at one time, the 
majority of the coffee plantations in the district, 
and rich and most productive of the fragrant 
berry they were in his early days — the days of 
the " Knuckles bricks," but also of virgin crops 
and quick as well as big returns for oapital in- 
vested. Need we say that Mr. Nicol revisited 
Rangala to lind soarcely a coffee plant remaining, 
at any rate to see a crop which ho oould carry 
away in his pockets; while tea and cardamoms — 
unthonght of in the days of old— had given new 
to the district. Mr. Nicol in conjunction 
with bin manager and partner, poor Sangster 
Martin, introduced sowo of tho hardest-headed and 
most practical Soots, Banff and Aberdeen Shires 
ever sent to Ceylon ; and a curious fact which we were 
tho first to remind thorn of, as both pioneers 
met in our presence lately, was, that these 
Soots after giving a certain term to Mr. Nicol's 
Htfttes imrih of Kamiy. gradually but surely mnvfd 
south (after true Scottish fashion) to take service 
under tho then only laird in Rakwana, Mr. C. 
Shand, and eventually to carve out olearings and 
fortuneH of their own in the forests of the Kolonna 
Korsle, It had never struck Nicol during all theso 
thirty years that he had a claim for "crimping" 
against bid brother planter and merchant I Matalo 
early shared tho attention of Mr. Nicol, along 
with Rangala. In the once famous Balakaduwa pro- 
pcity he had an cxtonsivo interest with worthy 
Ned Mortimer (still to tho fore), and to oblige a 
eon uncut friend who wanted urgently to sell, ho 
took over Cabroosa Ella cstato in Matalo East— tho 
estate on which " Young Scotchman"— afterwards 
" Old Colonist "—was said (by his friends) to have 
distinguished himself by cutting off all tho pri- 
marie., an his i.loa of pruning 1 When wo lately 
doe tiooed Mr. Nicol about this yarn, his choraoter- 
i lie tuiHWur wan "All I know is that 1 got off the 
I'' p. ilmps in the result of this pruning! — 
enough o( orop in tho one season to loavo a profit 
equal to tho total cost of tho placo 1" 
Mr. Nicol had many interesting experiences to 
relate of the early days and his trips into the 
lowcountry. One memorable ride through a region 
then unopened, via Northern Matale East, Laggala 
and away round by the back of the Knuckles and 
Nitre Cave, was in the company of Mr. George 
Christian of Messrs. Murray Robertson & Co., and 
hard work they had of it, being nearly famished 
before they got to food and rest. Mr. Nicol as a 
young man was one of the hardiest and strongest 
among our proprietary planters, and having 
engaged in coconut planting in the Batticaloa 
distriot, the trip across from Medamahanuwara 
through the Bintenna and Vedda country— then 
little traversed by Europeans — beoame quite a com- 
mon thing with him. At length he got tired of 
waiting for the returns from his palms and induced 
Mr. O'Grady — his manager — to buy the ooconut 
plantations for R35,000 we believe ; with the 
result that they now or of late years, have yielded 
nearly this amount in annual income. 
Mr. Nicol founded in Colombo the firm of Nicol, 
Cargill & Co— Mr. S. T. Richmond coming 
down from Bombay where Mr. Nicol had close 
connections with the great house of Wm. Nicol 
& Co., as well as with the corresponding Liverpool 
House of whioh Mr. Dyce Nicol, M. P., was the 
head. Mr. A. C. White became another partner 
in the Colombo firm, which assumed a leading 
estate agenoy position. We need scarcely relate 
how Mr. Nicol after this became a big Dimbula 
proprietor — as did also Mr. White, in taking over and 
dividing between them the properties on which the 
notorious Francis Hudson (then of Hudson & 
Chandler) had got advances. Here Mr. John 
Martin (following Mr. James Wright) took charge at 
a time when the estates in Dimbula did not 
count a dozen all told : half being grouped together 
below the Gap, and the others below Great Wes- 
tern approachable from Nuwara Eliyu. When Mr. 
Nicol went home in tho early " sixties," Mr. J. C. 
Fowlie — who following after Messrs. Shand, Darley 
and Alexander Gibson had made a fortune in 
Tinnevelly cotton, through the American blookade, 
— took his place and the firm beoame Fowlie, 
Richmond & Co., to which house in due season 
there oame in succession as young enterprising 
Assistants, now quite old residents in our midst, 
Messrs. W. Law, R. L. M. Brown and Wm. 
Somerville. 
That after being away for some fifteen or more 
years, Mr. Nicol should return and " renew his 
jouth" in watching the development of an entirely 
new planting enterprise in tea, adds to the romance 
of our history as a Colony. No young planter 
fresh to the island could take more interest in 
his tea fields and factory than did Mr. Nicol in 
everything appertaining to his fine (Hassaugh pro- 
perty ; and ho used to tell with great gusto the story 
of bis sending three samples of his tea to a leading 
Loudon authority, and adding a fourth from the 
fame tea to make his packet square, and getting 
a report back very favourable to the three samples, 
but that the tea in tho fourth was burnt ! Mr. 
Nicol was for a long time tho subject of attack on 
account of a Rangala Church Subscription of 
which he had been Treasurer, but about which, it 
was maintained, no aocount could bo got, after 
the proposal to build was given up. Of letters 
innumorablo, Mr. Nicol characteristically took no 
heed ; but bcfoie leaving the island this time, 
he voluntarily gavo satisfactory explanations of 
how tho subscriptions had been returned chiefly to 
tho represontatives of men now dead. 
Latterly Mr. Nicol has suffored in health a good 
deal, being for some months under the caro of 
Pr. Moir at Mount Lavinin, tho wiuter preventing 
