76 
THE TROPICAL AGPJCULTUEIST. 
[Aug, 1, 1899. 
—his first and last furlough— and revisited his 
native Scotland. Returning in 1872, he found soon 
after, that the proprietor of the estates inhis charge, 
having died, his places had to be sold and a 
new Superintendent was selected. Mr. Laniont, 
however, had by this time a little Coconut venture 
of his own in the Maha-oya Valley— the opening up 
of whicl), for we suppose 30 by 10 miles, he has 
watched from the beginning— and of this he took 
charge. But another whirligig of change : in 
1877 he sold out, and once again got charge of 
llatmalana ; but only for two years ; and then lie 
went to open a lowcountry property— Eilandhu — 
near Henaratgoda, for the late Mr. A. M. Ferguson, 
in Coconuts, some Cacao and Fruit, and Tea. 
Here Mr. Lamont remained seven years and then 
returned to the Maha-oya Valley where he had 
still some interests. In 1891 he disposed of these 
and in 1893 settled on a block of land near 
Ratnapura, Avhich has been opened as a tea 
plantation (for himself and partners) — Kosgalla — 
137 acres out of 313 being planted with tea. This 
in a letter before us he pathetically calls his " last 
flitting," the word applied in Scotland to a change 
of residence — one of the most touching of Border 
songs being " Lucy's Flitting," written by William 
Laidlaw, so long the faithful, homely friend and 
amanuensis of Sir Walter Scott. The subject of our 
notice, however, belongs to ^one [of the Western 
counties of the Borderland, to that part of Scotland 
where lies the scene of Crockett's story of the 
" Raiders;" for, W. B. Lamont is a Galloway man, 
and we can recall the interested enquiry of a well- 
known Banker (in the O.B.C. days) as to what 
Galloway man could have written a clever story in 
one of our Christmas numbers, as he had thought 
he had been the only repi'esentative of Galloway 
in Ceylon ! Our reply was that " W.B.L." had left 
Galloway long before our Banking friend was born. 
— So much for a brief summary of this old Plant- 
ing Pioneer's career ; but now we have his own 
autobiographical story written — be it remembered 
by a man well on in his 83rd year — and in the 
quaint, homely but eminently readable style 
which this self-made, honest, industrious and 
God-fearing Colonist long ago made his own. Let 
no one despise these simple annals of a cottager's 
son trained to hard work from childhood and 
rising by slow degrees : — 
" Honour and shame from no condition rise ; 
Act well your part, there all the honour lies : 
Fortune in men has some small difference made — 
One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade." 
AUTOBIOGRAPHIC. 
On the 13th of February, 1818, I came to stay in 
the household of a labouring man — the seventh of ten 
■uch guests who arrived at interval?, during twenty 
years, The place where this event took place was a 
cottage within five minutes' walk of the mansion-house 
of Woodhall, a gentleman's seat in the parish of 
Balmaghee and Stewartry of Kirkcudbright ; and 
there I spent the first five years of my life and 
began to develop my individuality. My natal place is, 
in my memory, a lovely spot amid woods and pastures, 
with an extensive view over an undulatmg country, 
the villages of Lauriston in the foreground, and 
Bengairn in the distance. Unfortunately, an elder 
brother was accused of knocking down a hare that 
crossed his path ; and the very suspicion of such a crime 
was sufficient to account for the warning to flit that 
speedily followed, My father was silentlj' sorrow- 
ful, but my mother lamented her exile from the 
bonny Woodhall in verse. My father obtained a 
shelter for his family in the Clauchan of Tongland 
on the bank of the Dee, two miles above Kirkcud- 
bright, which continued to be our home till the 
last of us took wing in search of a livelihood. My 
mother died when 1 was ten years old — the eldest of 
four, the youngest under one year. My elder brothers 
were then earning their living away from home and I 
had on the sad event to take up the role of cook and 
housekeeper. I had learned to read after a fashion 
in a dame's school in Clauchan — an accomplishment 
I did not allow to rust. Before I was ten years I could 
have passed a creditable examination in Bible History. 
My father had some few volumes of devotional and 
controversial Divinity that were not much to my taste ; 
but I read Buchanan's History of Scotland and 
Knox's of the Eefoimation with keen interest and 
every other story I could borrow from any of the 
neighbours. In my twelfth year I vpas sent to the parish 
school with more knowledge than most boys of my 
age, but a sad deficiency in my pronunciation of 
polysyllables. At first my reading and spelling took 
me to the bottom of my class, but the explanation 
carried me as regularly to the top and at the end of 
three months, I stayed there and was rapidly promoted 
till in little more than a year I had reached the 
highest taught in the institution. I had then finally 
to leave school and take up farm work for a time. 
At that time the " Tally " business in England ab- 
sorbed a good many young men of my class who found 
themselves superfluous commodities at home. Tally 
men are a sort of commercial travellers on a small 
scale: a man that had done well in the business got 
lads from Scotland and sometimes employed as many 
as five or six, each of whom had two-week rounds that 
brought them to the same place once a fortnight. They 
had to enquire into the means and characters of the 
dwellers within'their sphere of action; select those whom 
they thought it safe to trust; and from such they 
must endeavour to obtain orders by forcing their way 
into houses, entertaining the inmates with small talk, 
displaying their samples, expatiting on the quality 
of the goods, and the advantage of paying in fortnightly 
instalments. To perform their duties efficiently 
they should have dauntless audacity, ready tact and 
unfailing fluency of speech. It was only by experience 
that I discovered my own deficiency of every one 
of those qualities ; so I turned out a dead failure and 
returned home to farm work. My next move was to 
a nursery where I learned something of the propa- 
gation and culture of plants from the daisy to the 
oak, though not all that lies between them. My next 
move was into the service of a maiden lady — one of 
the Maitlands o£ Barcaple, an ancient family of landed 
gentry in Tongland — who was building a villa in the 
suburbs of Kirkcudbright. My work there was to lay 
out, plant and tend the garden and the four acres 
of land with fences and the etceteras thereanent. 
After nearly two years in this post, the lady's brother, 
the laird of Barcaple and a Mincing Lane broker 
offered to send me out to Ceylon to assist in form- 
ing coffee estates. I gladly accepted the offer as I had 
long desired to emigrate to Australia and was not 
then aware that life vras very different in Ceylon. 
I was perfectly satisfied with his terms, viz. a free 
passage, board and lodging for three years, and a 
salary of £B0, £10 and i'50 for the same period. 
Mr. Maitland kept me in London for two months 
by the way. I suppose for the purpose of studying my 
