8z6 
THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. [April i, 1882. 
the visitors opposite the estate tbose hound for Kandy 
or returning to Colombo being picked up by the 
afternoon trains. Isolated visitors wouhl have to face 
a long aud hot walk along the line from Polgaha- 
wela, or a ride which, in either case, could not be 
accomplished under at least a couple of hours, and 
as the return to the station would occupy about the 
same time, very little time or energy would be left 
for looking at the estate with its splendid blossom, 
and fruit-laden coffee bushes, interspersed with cacao 
trees with their long leaves and large pods. Owing to 
this disadvantage of position with reference to a rail- 
way station, visits to this the first Liberian coffee 
estate in Ceylon, must be much more " like angel- 
visits, few and far between," than the spirited and 
hospitable owner could wish. Much more manageable, 
in the interval between the arrival of the morning 
train from Colombo at Polgahawela, about \ past 9 
a. m., and the passing down of the afternoon train 
from Kandy, about 4 p. m., is a visit to the younger 
but equally successful plantation of Udapolla, which 
can be easily reached in abullock hackery drive of half-an 
hour or less from the station. For most part of the 
way the journey is over the main road to Kurune- 
gala, and the road opened to connect the estate with 
this highway and bo with the railway, is short and 
easy, its terminus revealing a scene, well worth seeing 
by those who believe in Liberian coffee or cocoa ; 
but still more worthy of attention by tbose who are 
sceptical because either of absolute ignorance of what 
has been accomplished, or of an exaggerated idea of the 
effect of preliminary difficulties, some of which were 
and are formidable enough, but which intelligent per- 
severance, observation, experience and skill have in 
this case conquered as they will in others. Our in- 
troductory matter has taken up so much space, that 
we must defer until tomorrow the details of our pleasant 
and profitable visit to the Messrs. Leechman's 
Liberian coffee and cocoa estate Udapolla, on the 
possession of which they are to be congratulated, and 
the flourishing condition of which we consider of good 
augury to enterprize in Ceylon. For the present we 
would simply add that, amongst the sights to be seen 
in travelling along the line, the traveller to Kandy 
should not by any means mi*s a good look at the 
successful experiment by Messrs. Leechman & Co. in 
planting up a portion of an old Arabian coffee estate 
wijh Liberian plants. Those plants, fresh, flourishing, 
and most promising, can be seen as the train emerges 
from the darkness of the long Moragala tunnel, on 
the right hard side of the line, just before the 
carriages cross the rocks of Wyrley Grove and run 
almost sheer over the celebrated Kadugannawa Pass 
road . The constructors of the road and ever, those 
who made the railway had no idea that Liberian 
coffee and cacao would rank, as they certainly will, 
amongst the important and profitable products of 
Ceylon. 
No. II. 
CULTIVATION BETWEEN COLOMBO AND POLGAHAWELA — 
CEYLON COMPARED WITH JAVA. 
The country through which the railway runs be- 
tween Colombo and Polagahawela is almost a per- 
fect flat, the rice swamps being diversified only by 
low laterite knolls, on which the habitations of the 
natives are placed, but in such dense groves of 
coconut, areka and talipot palm, with jak, bread- 
fruit, cadju and other trees, that only a few of the 
houses can be observed from the line. While the 
vegetation generally presents an air of rich luxuriance, 
the amount of low undergrowth, in the shape of 
guava, lantana, &c, in the immediate neighbourhood 
of houses, suggests the idea of untidiness, and the 
European traveller feels inclined to ask : " Why do 
the people not clear and keep cleai the space about 
their houses ? " The Sinhalese cottagers would reply 
that, besides not seeing any advantage in unnecess- 
ary labour, they know that to clear and keep cleared 
of subsidiary growth the spaces near their houses 
would simply deprive them of a readily available store 
of small timber for firewood and other purposes. 
The intermixture of palms and trees of ordinary 
leafage on the knolls, contrasting with the sheets of 
water, the emerald green expanses of rice, or those 
which, as is the case now, are yellow for the harvest, 
is often very picturesque, and long before the great 
bulk of the Allagala mountain looms out beyond Pol- 
gahawelaall feeling of monotony is dissipated by the ap- 
pearance of the lower ranges of hills rising over the 
Mahaoya. The perfectly flat " paddy " fields for 
about forty miles along the railway beyond Colombo 
form a great contrast to the terraced rice fields seen 
in Java en route from Batavia to Buitenzorg ; while 
the pretty terraces in the Dekanda valley form just 
a minute specimen of the vast terraced hill-valleys 
between Buitenzorg and Bandong, the latter the capital 
of tiio Preanger Regency. Some of the walls of the 
Java terraces are seven, ten and more feet high, cut 
in soft, greasy, brown volcanic soil which is as rich 
in the sub-strata as on the top. We have no such, 
soil to shew in Ceylon, but neither have we to 
combat, in the case of fallows, such a. fearful array 
of alang-alang. " Alang " is the Malay form of our 
Ceylon word iluJe, and the doubling of the name is 
in accordance with the genius of the Malay language 
when an intensified form of good or evil, size, preval- 
ence, or luxuriance, has to be expressed. If we possess 
not the fertile volcanic soil of Java, neither does 
our soil produce such expanses of a grass' so difficult 
to extirpate as the " alang-alang," nor is a village in 
Ceylon likely, with its 100 inhabitants, to be suddenly 
overwhelmed by a mud avalanche, as happened in the 
Dutch colony, the other day on the side of Merapi — the 
Mountain of Fire. Our predominant element is wafpr, 
and there ie plenty of it for the husbandmin's buffa- 
loes to luxuriate in. Amongst the strange sights in 
Java, apart from the spectacle of a Malay or Javan-, 
eee ploughman sitting on his plough to give it a better 
hold of the earth (a thing we never saw done in the. 
soft mud fields of Ceylon), one of the most peculiar is 
the prevalent flesh-colour of the buffaloes. On firsfy 
seeing the animals we experienced somewhat of tha.- 
same revulsion of feeling produced by the appearance 
of a white man in a state of nudity, in a country where 
it is the custom of the dark-coloured races to walk, 
about almost clotheless. We really felt as if the 
pink-skinned buffaloes had left home without their 
