338 
THE  TROPICAL  AGRICULTURIST. 
[Nov.  i,  1892. 
trained  planter,  like  the  Scotchman,  who  is  never  so 
much  at  home  as  when  he  is  abroad,  promises  to 
become  ubiquitous.  The  first  great  exodus  took  place 
after  the  collapse  of  our  coffee,  when  some  300 
planters  gradually  left  Ceylon,  and  began  cultiva- 
tion in  the  jungles  of  Perak  and  Johore,  of  the 
Straits  Settlements,  in  North  Borneo  or  “New 
Ceylon,”  in  the  tobacco  fields  of  Deli,  Sumatra;  in  the 
sugar-growing  regions  of  Northern  Queensland;  while 
I found  some  of  them  in  1884  in  the  vineyards  and 
fruit  orchards  of  California,  and  orange-growing  in 
Florida.  Others  went  to  try  coffee  on  the  Blue 
Mountains  of  Jamaica,  to  revive  cacao  planting  in 
Grenada,  to  open  coffee  and  cinchona  plantations 
for  the  President  of  Guatemala,  and  to  supervise 
coffee  investments  in  Brazil.  Farther,  two  ex-Ceylon 
planters  of  experience  have  lately  returned  from  a 
Trans- Andean  Expedition  in  Peru,  where  they  ex- 
plored and  selected  arge  areas  of  fine  land  for 
tropical  products,  these  areas  lying  along  the  tribu- 
taries of  the  Amazon,  and  being  taken  up  for  the 
Peruvian  Corporation  of  London,  while  another 
gentleman,  Mr.  J.  L.  Shand,  closely  connected  with 
Ceylon,  has  just  been  reporting  on  cultivation  in 
Johore  and  North  Borneo. 
New  Guinea  and  Madagascar  have  been  explored 
by  Ceylon  planters,  and  among  the  pioneers  in  the 
hill-country  of  East,  or  rather  Central  Africa,  at 
this  moment  are  men  trained  in  our  island. 
An  illustration  of  what  is  thought  of  such  training 
in  other  lands  came  under  my  notice  the  other  day. 
One  of  our  planters  was  travelling  through  a West 
Indian  island.  The  director  of  the  local  Botanic 
Gardens,  greatly  interested  in  his  cacao  field,  and 
seeking  the  opinion  of  his  Ceylon  visitor  on  the 
different  kinds  he  had  growing  together,  was  reminded 
by  the  latter  of  one  result  in  the  probability  of  his 
different  plants  hybridizing.  “Ah  !’’  said  the  director, 
“that  word  alone  teaches  me  a lesson  as  to  your 
training,  such  a suggestion  I have  never  heard  from 
any  West  Indian  Planter.” 
But  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  there  are  no 
black  sheep,  nor  ill-trained  men,  uor  those  who  de- 
cline hard  work,  among  Ceylon  planters.  Indeed,  the 
joke  is  that  a few  under  the  last  category,  who 
have  come  to  the  country  with  capital,  having, 
by  sheer  good  luck,  so  invested  that  they  have  been 
able  in  a short  time  to  return  to  the  old  country 
with  scarcely  a day’s  hard  work  to  their  credit,  but 
with  the  prospect  of  a fair  income, — have  gone  about 
saying  that  “the  old  fogies  ” who  toil  and  slave  out 
there  for  long  years  “have  no  brains,  Sir.”  In  other 
cases,  no  doubt,  it  has  been  a question  of  “capital" 
versus  “experience,”  and  sometimes  these  commo- 
dities are  somehow,  after  a time,  rightly  or  wrongly, 
exchanged ! Then  there  is  what  we  call  the  “ tropical 
swing” — the  tide  and  ebb  of  prosperity — the  alterna- 
tion of  prosperity  and  depression,  not  unknown,  I 
take  it,  in  the  city  of  London,  as  in  the  plantation 
colonies  of  Britain. 
In  Ceylon  we  have  freely  demonstrated  the  great 
law  of  the  “survival  of  the  fittest,”  for  there  are 
some  products  which  though  experimented  with,  have 
never  proved  a success.  Among  these  is  Cane  Sugar 
for  which,  even  if  we  had  the  needful  expanses  of 
rich  alluvial  soil,  our  persistently  moist  c'imate  in 
South-west  Ceylon — the  populous  occupied  side — is 
not  suited;  although  fifty  years  ago  a great  deal 
of  money  was  spent  before  this  was  conclusively 
demonstrated.  Again,  more  recent  experiments  and 
investments  have  shown  that  Ceylon  can  never  be 
much  of  a tobacco- growing  country,  and  yet  in  certain 
districts  the  natives  do  grow  agreit  deal  of  tobacco 
for  themselves,  and  some,  at  least,  sent  home  by 
Europeans  fetched  good  prices.  In  growing  cotton , 
too,  we  have  not  had  much  success.  But  on  the 
other  hand,  we  profess  to  know  from  the  best  of 
practical  experience  and  success,  as  much  about  spice- 
yielding  trees  and  shrubs  and  their  bark  and  seeds; 
about  palms,  their  nuts,  fibres  and  oils ; about  cin- 
chona, coffee,  cacao  and  tea,  as  all  the  rest  of  the 
world  put  together:  and  we  aim  at  turning  out  the 
very  best  of  products  under  these  heads. 
Let  me  rUn  over  the  staple  products  thus  indi- 
cated, with  reference  more  especially  to  the  purpose 
of  this  paper;  and  first  I will  take  the  spice  Cin- 
namon, which  has  longest  been  identified  with  Ceylon 
and,  indeed,  is  the  only  one  of  our  principal  products 
of  which  we  can  speak  as  indigenous.  For,  we  have 
not  only  the  cinnamon  shrub  growing  in  Colombo 
and  in  the  cultivated  plantations  of  the  Negombo 
and  Morotuwa  districts ; but  we  have  the  same 
cinnamon  as  one  of  our  most  striking  forest  trees 
in  the  interior.  There  it  blazes  out  at  certain 
seasons  in  every  shade  of  pink,  crimson  and  scarlet. 
Nowhere  else  does  the  cultivated  cinnamon  grow  so  well 
or  produce  bark  of  so  fine  a quality  as  on  the  Coast  of 
Ceylon.  The. island  has  been  famed  for  this  spice  since 
the  dawn  of  historical  records.  Merchants  in  Rome 
traded  in  cinnamon  in  the  time  of  Augustus,  contenting 
themselves  with  nothing  less  than  100  per  cent,  profit, 
and  this,  the  price  then  prevailing  for  the  rave 
precious  bark,  of  S/.  sterling  per  lb.  amply  covered, 
even  with  all  the  risks  attending  the  annual  trading 
expedition  in  its  transit  across  Egypt  and  down 
the  Red  Sea  to  the  Far  East.  The  command  of 
its  cinnamon  was  the  main  attraction  in  Ceylon  to 
the  Portuguese  and  Dutch,  and  indeed  also  to  the 
British  in  the  early  days.  Because  of  its  spice, 
Ceylon  was  considered,  in  the  16th  and  17 tli  centuries, 
the  most  valuable  gem  in  the  crown  of  Portugal ; 
and  Vet  at  that  time,  and  up  to  1767,  there  was  no 
systematic  cultivation  of  cinnamon,  while  until  fifty 
years  ago  the  trade  was  a Government  monoply. 
With  the  abolition  of  the  monopoly  and  heavy 
export  duties,  the  cultivation  and  export  rapidly 
increased ; but  alas,  as  with  so  many  other  products, 
the  prices  fell  in  correspondence  from  8s.  to  5s. 
to  2.s.  6ff.,  and  now  to  a rate  (Is.  2d.  to  Is.  6 d.) 
which  is  said  barely  to  cover  the  cost  of  cultivation 
and  careful  preparation.  This  is  partly  owing  to 
the  fault  of  Ceylon  growers  themselves,  in  starting 
and  persisting  in  a trade  in  “ chips which  affects 
the  demand  and  price  for  the  properly  baled  spice ; 
but  it  is  due  still  more  to  the  competition  of  infreior 
cinnamon  from  Java  and  other  parts  of  the  Eastern 
Archipelago,  and  to  large  quantities  of  cassia  from 
China,  we  have  to  consider,  too,  that  cinnamon 
is  scarcely  a necessary  food  product.  Indeed  its 
consumption  largely  depends  on  the  demand  for 
incense  in  Southern  Europe  and  other  Roman 
Catholic  countries,  although  a certain  quantity  is 
worked  up  in  chocolate — notably  in  Spain.  So  far 
as  I can  learn,  the  world’s  production  of  the  true 
cultivated  cinnamon  does  not  exceed  three  million 
pounds,  Java  and  the  Malabar  Coast  supplementing 
the  Ceylon  supply’;  but  of  cassia,  double  or  even 
treble  this  quantity  is  collected  and  shipped  from 
China,  Siam,  Sumatra  and  other  parts  of  the  Far  East. 
Ceylon  can  produce  finer  cinnamon  than  any 
other  land,  and  if  only  the  price  afforded  a fair  profit 
to  the  planter,  our  permanent  supply  could  easily  be 
increased  50  or  even  100  per  cent.,  but  of  late 
years  a good  deal  of  cinnamon  cultivation  has  had 
to  be  abandoned,  the  land  being  used  for  coconut 
and  other  palms  and  fruit  trees. 
I will  next  talk  of  Pepper,  a spice  closely  allied  with 
cinnamon  in  the  early  day’s  in  the  records  of  the  Ceylon 
trade.  “3000  lb.  weight  of  Cinnamon  and  Pepper” 
was  the  gift  sent  by  the  King  of  Kandy  to  the  King 
of  Holland,  when  invoking  his  aid  against  the  Por- 
tuguese in  1602.  The  Dutch  paid  special  attention 
to  the  pepper  trade,  and  Ceylon  pepper  was  by  them 
very  highly  prized,  their  Ceylon  Governor  in  1740 
considering  it  a more  important  article  than 
coffee,  because  he  did  not  fear  an  over-supply.  In 
this  respect  I believed  until  lately  he  was  a true 
prophet ; for  I had  considered  that  pepper  was  one 
of  the  few  tropical  products  for  which  the  demand 
was  in  advance  of  the  supply,  but  I learn  that  of 
late  supplies  have  come  in  from  the  Eastern  Archi- 
pelago in  much  larger  quantities,  that  pepper  is  likely 
to  fall  to  2d.  a lb.'  From  Ceylon,  the  Dutch  exported 
nearly  half  a million  pounds  of  pepper  150  years  ago, 
but  strange  to  say,  ever  since  the  export  has  fallen 
off,  until  when  the  British  arrived,  at  the  beginning 
of  this  century,  it  did  not  exceed  100,0  >0  lb.,  and 
now,  in  spite  of  attempts  to  revive  the  cultivation 
on  the  part  of  European  planters,  and  of  encourage- 
ment to  the  natives  through  the  Botanical  Gardens 
