Nov.  i,  1892.] 
THE  TROPICAL  AGRICULTURIST. 
339 
t’ne  export  from  Ceylon,  apart  from  local  consumption, 
does  not  exceed  a few  hundred  pounds.  From  India, 
the  export  in  a single  year  has  been  as  much  as 
12,000,000  lb.,  Java  and  Sumatra  sending  three  times 
that  quantity  to  Europe ; while  the  Malayan  Pen- 
insula, Siam,  Borneo  and  other  parts  of  the  Eastern 
Archipelago  contribute  to  make  up  the  rest  of  the 
world’s  production,  which  is  estimated  at  seventy 
million  pounds. 
Cardamoms,  or  “grains  of  paradise,”  on  the  other 
hand,  are  a spice  which,  freely  cultivated  and  ex- 
ported from  Ceylon  in  the  time  of  the  Portuguese 
(between  three  and  four  hundred  years  ago),  and 
also  in  that  of  the  Dutch,  afterwards,  like  pepper, 
fell  off  to  a few  hundreds  or  thousands  of  pounds ; 
indeed,  the  Ceylonese  had,  some  thirty  years  ago, 
begun  to  import  some  from  India  for  local  con- 
sumption. This,  however,  was  one  of  the  products 
which  the  coffee  planter  (when  his  staple  failed) 
began  to  cultivate  with  profit,  and  thus  the  export 
from  Ceylon  has  risen  from  9,000  lb.  in  1873-4  to 
400,000  lb.;  and  Indian  planters  have  been  com- 
plaining that  the  rush  in  Ceylon  is  likely  to  spoil 
the  market,  if  it  has  not  already  done  so.  Alto- 
gether there  are  about  5000  acres  cultivated  with 
this  spice  on  Ceylon  plantations,  apart  from  small 
plots  in  native  gardens,  the  produce  of  which  is 
chiefly  consumed  locally;  and  although  I do  not 
think  there  is  much  room,  even  if  there  were 
encouragement,  for  extension,  yet  I see  no  reason 
why  ' eylon  should  not  keep  up  a steady  export  of 
from  400,000  to  500,000  lb.  of  cardamoms.  Travancore, 
Coorg,  and  Mysore  supply  the  greater  part  of  the 
Indian  production  of  cardamons,  a market  for  which 
is  found  in  the  Presidency  towns  as  well  as  in 
Europe.  India,  of  late  years,  has  not  exported 
more  than  400,000  lb.  of  cardamons ; latterly,  indeed, 
only  half  that  figure  has  been  reach-d,  although 
the  Customs  accounts  show  for  all  spices  (chiefly 
ginger  and  pepper,  with  cardamoms)  a total  export 
of  nearly  25,000,000  lb. 
The  price  of  cardamoms  in  the  London  market 
has  certainly  fallen  steadily  in  correspondence 
with  increased  exports  from  Ceylon,  so  that  while 
the  highest  quotation  was  9.s.  Id.  in  1880-1  when 
we  shipped  16,069  lb.,  it  fell  to  5s.  2 d.  five  years 
afterwards,  when  our  export  was  154,405  lb.,  and 
now  that  we  send  you  more  than  400,000  lb.,  it  is 
only  a little  over  2s.  So  that  here  is  another 
product,  like  “Cinnamon,”  the  cultivation  of  which, 
if  suggested  in  new  lands,  to  you  gentlemen — capi- 
talists of  the  city  of  London — 'should  be  met  with 
Punch's  well-known  negative,  “ Don't or,  at  any 
rate,  with  only  very  cautious  encouragement. 
Still  more  has  that  lesson  been  impressed  by  the 
logic  of  facts  in  reference  to  our  next  product,  Cin- 
chona, the  history  of  which  in  Eastern  lands,  and 
the  metamorphosis  resulting  in  the  Cinchona  bark 
and  quinine  trade,  is  probably  without  parallel  in  the 
whole  history  of  agriculture  and  trade.  The  result 
has  brought  little  or  no  permanent  benefit  to  the 
planter,  with  the  ruin  of  the  bark  trade  as  formerly 
conducted;  but  the  consequent  cheapening  of  quinine 
has  proved  an  immense  gain  to  humanity,  especially 
in  malarious  countries,  and  the  full  extent  of  this 
has,  as  yet,  by  no  means  been  realized.  Systematic 
cinchona  culture  was  first  begun  in  Java;  but  Mr. 
Clements  Markham  was  not  far  behind  with  his  ear- 
liest batch  of  plants  for  the  Nilgiris  from  South 
America,  and,  from  the  depot  formed  at  the  Royal 
Botanic  Gardens  at  Kew,  seed  soon  after  reached  the 
Ceylon  Gardens.  For  a long  time,  though,  our 
director  could  hardly  get  a planter  to  look  at  what 
they  knew  as  “a  medicine  plant.”  The  first  private 
experiment  was  begun  in  1863-4  by  a Kandy  firm, 
one  former  partner  in  which  (Mr.  Leake)  lam  glad 
to  see  in  the  room,  and  who  still  maintains  a close 
connection  with  Ceylon.  By-and-bye  plants  were 
taken  and  put  out  to  grow  as  ornamental  trees,  or 
as  groves  or  shelter  belts.  After  some  years  it  was 
found,  on  stripping  or  coppicing  such  trees,  that  the 
return  per  tree  or  per  acre  was  not  simply  handsome, 
but  enormous,  and  gradually  it  dawned  upon  a good 
many  that  here  was  not  only  a suitable  quick-growing 
flftut,  fjut  a commercial  product  of  high  value.  The 
steady  failure  in  coffee  which  about  that  time  set  in, 
gave  an  impetus  to  the  rush  after  cinchona,  until 
there  was  scarcely  a coffee  district — nay,  a plantation 
— which  had  not  cinchona  planted  right  over  it.  The 
few  early  planters,  of  course,  profited  heavily,  some 
to  the  tune  of  100/.  or  more  per  acre  cultivated ; but 
there  were  only  a few  acres  in  most  cases. 
One  old  planter  is  fond  of  narrating  how  his 
partners  threw  away  35,000/.  to  40,000/.  because  they 
would  not  allow  him  to  put  150,000  cinchona  plants 
on  the  boundaries  and  among  the  coffee  in  opening 
their  plantation  in  the  early  sixties,  an  arrangement 
which  (after  striking  off  half  for  deaths)  would  cer- 
tainly have  given  40,000/.  worth  of  bark  seven  to  ten 
years  later.  In  1880  high-water  mark  for  Ceylon  bark 
may  be  said  to  have  been  reached,  when  a quantity 
from  trees  eight  years  old  realized  10*.  per  lb  ; while 
as  high  a price  as  15*.  8cZ.  was  got  for  renewed  bark 
from  the  Kilgiris.  Is  it  any  wonder,!  then,  that  the 
Ceylon  planters,  with  their  coffee  crops  growing 
smaller  by  degrees  and  beautifully  less,  should  have 
all  gone  in  for  cinchona,  until,  in  1883,  it  was  esti- 
mated there  were  60,000,000  of  plants  or  young  trees 
growing  in  our  hill-country  ? and  men  counting  on 
one-half,  one-fourth,  or  even  one-tenth,  of  the  return 
per  tree  that  had  been  actually  got  by  their  neigh- 
bours, could  not  fail  to  reckon  that  fortune  was  within 
their  gra'-p.  For  instance,  seeing  that  seven  to  eight- 
year-old  trees  had  actually  given  15s.  net  per  tree 
of  bark,  what  could  be  safer  than  to  count  at  least 
on  an  average  of  2*.  per  tree,  in  which  case  it  was 
plain  that  by  1888  to  1890  there  would  fall  some  five 
to  six  millions  sterling  to  be  distributed  among  the 
lucky  Ceylon  cinchona  growers ! How  that  dream 
vanished  is,  perhaps,  to  most  of  you  a familiar  tale. 
In  the  first  place,  hard  necessity,  or  the  failure  of 
his  coffee,  forced  the  Ceylon  planter  (“  my  poverty 
and  not  my  will  consents”)  to  harvest  bark  from 
young,  immature  trees,  and  exports  ran  up  from 
500,000  lb.  in  1879  to  nearly  12,000,000  lb.  in  1884, 
and  to  close  on  16,000,000  lb.  (as  a maximum)  in  1887. 
Even  though  such  bark  did  not  realize  heavily,  yet, 
seeing  that  the  total  supply  from  all  countries,  a few 
years  before,  did  not  equal  2,000,000  lb.,  the  natural 
result  was  a great  fall  in  price.  “Who  could  have 
supposed,”  said  an  experinced  ex-cinchona  merchant 
to  me  the  other  day,  “that  when  we  gave  out 
75,000/.  in  advances  to  South  America  on  contracts 
based  on  48  to  50  cents  of  a dollar  per  lb.  for  2 per 
cent,  bark,  Ceylon  was  going  to  bring  the  price 
down  to  Id.  the  unit  I"  But  such  was  the  case. 
Howard’s  quinine,  which  was  12*.  2§d  in  1878-9,  fell 
to  2*.  4(7.  by  1886-7,  and  is  now  not  much  over  1*. 
per  ounce.  Very  speedily  the  systematic  cultivation 
of  cinchona  in  Ceylon  was  discontinued,  save  on  a 
few  estates  in  the  Uva  province,  where  unusually 
rich  bark  can  be  grown  and  the  risks  of  failure  of 
plants  are  very  few.  But  everywhere  else  tea  took 
the  place  of  cinchona,  and  over  a wide  expanse  young 
plants  of  the  latter  were  pulled  out  as  weeds,  until, 
from  60,000,000  trees  in  1883,  a liberal  calculation 
now  cannot  make  more  than  7,000,000  to  8,000,000 
of  cinchona  trees  over  two  years  oid  as  growing  in 
Ceylon,  and  the  export  of  bark  in  the  last  four  years 
has  diminished  to  one-third  of  its  highest  figures. 
In  proportion  as  the  Ceylon  export  has  fallen  off, 
however,  so  has  that  of  Java — where  the  planters, 
less  pressed  for  funds,  were  able  to  allow  their  treep, 
to  mature — gone  on  increasing,  and  the  bark  jc  a 
much  richer  one.  Java,  in  fact,  along  with  Ceylon 
and  India,  now  controls  the  market,  leaving  )jUt  little 
room  for  South  American  bark. 
My  estimate  of  the  World’s  Production,  or  rather 
Supply  of  Bark  and  Consumption  p:.-  Quinine,  quantum 
valeat , is  as  follows 
Cinchona  P.Irk. 
Quinine 
required, 
total  iu 
Exports. 
Java, 
lbs. 
Exports, 
Ceylon, 
' lbs. 
India, 
lbs. 
mil.  mil.  p.c.  bark.  mil.  p.c. 
1892  9 8 4 „ 5 2 
1893  9|  8g  4J  „ 4 2i 
1891  10  9 4£  „ 3J  2* 
mil.  p.c. 
2 2J 
2 
n .. 
Total  of 
quinine, 
ozs.  out  of 
bark  from 
Java,  Cey- 
lon, India, 
mil. 
74 
8i 
