AtJG. 1, 1899 ] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTUEIST. 
•77 
character and capacity and to rub off some of my 
rusticity. He sent me on messages about the City 
and suburbs ; he made me write to his dictation 
long letters to his Ceylon attorney and he directed 
me to write to hia sister my impressions of the 
great City. He took advantage of my ignorance to 
send me on errands to make foolish enquiries and 
thereby took me in on several occasions that made 
me blush for my stupidity. 
At last, I joined 
THE BARK " IRIS " (cAPT. LISTON), 
at Gravesend. Bly fellow-passengers were Dr. Kelson, 
Mr. and Mrs. Dawson, of the Baptist Diission, Miss 
Tweedy, Alexander Davidson, Matthew Lamb and 
Thomas Moitimer, a Jaffna Tamil, whom the CM S. 
had sent home as a specimen of their success in educa- 
ting the natives. I alone am left of ihit set of fellow- 
creatures. 
We reached Colombo on 17th February, 1841, five 
months minus sis days out. A steady head wind kept us 
in the Channel three weeks and things were not much 
better in the Bay ; in fact all the passengers were laid up 
■with sea sickness till we were in sight of Madeira, where 
we had three days on shore, while wine was being taken 
in for the East India voyage. We were becalmed for 
nine days within 400 miles of Ceylon, which was ended 
by a squall that caused some havoc in the rigging and 
snapped the main yard. 
I had to remain in Colombo for three days before 
I could get a seat in the coach. When I arrived in 
Kandy, the welcome of my P. D. seemed to me not 
quite so cordial as I thought I had a right to 
expect. Well, neither in dress nor manner did I reach 
his ideal of what his coadjutor should be : so he decided 
that I should go at once to the fittest place for such 
a rustic boor. After one day in Kandy we started for 
the spot where the estate was to be. We went to 
Gampola on horseback and then on foot by the little 
frequented native track across paddy fields up and 
down rocky ravines over tracts of low jungle. Our 
quarters for the night was a large ambalam about a 
mile beyond what is now 
THE TOWN OF NAWALAPITIYA, 
which then was a single hut inhabited by an old 
Moorman. On reaching our lodgings I was fairly done 
up and at once lay down on one of the mud-built bunks, 
Just off a long voyage and unsuitably dressed for a 
jungle journey, I was in bad form for such work in a 
blazing hot tropical day. I could eat nothing, but 
lay in there in pain and in the full belief that my 
first night in the jungle was to be my last. Towards 
the middle of the night, however, nature came to my 
relief and when daylight came I wa? fresh and empty- 
much fitter for the second day's journey than the first. 
Passing the Mahawille and the Masnawatte gangas 
by fords and climbing up a forest-clad hill, at the 
summit a view was obtained of the country destined 
to be the scene of my labours for fifteen years. 
Thousands of acres of patana lay before us seading 
spurs far up the forest-covered mountains : on the 
south lay the Galboda ridge, on the west Eaxawa and 
Unulagala and on the east the Ritigala range with 
the Mastnawatte-ganga in the bottom of the vale. The 
top of the most distant patana to the left was pointed 
out as our destination ; and, aftera short rest, we started 
afresh to wade through some two miles of long grass and 
in descending to the bottom of the valley we forded 
several streams that formed the main river lower down. 
From the last stream we had to climb a steep patana 
for a thousand feet. The settlement was not visible 
from below being situate in an inward dip of the land 
and not to be seen till within a few yards. I sat down 
on the grass and stared at the scene before me. There 
were three separate huts thatched with patana grass — 
two of them 10x20 feet and one 15 x -10— one of the small- 
er ones had the walls roughly ticished and the other two 
had the wattle up, but were wating fcr the daub. 
Writing home, Icompared them to bigbird cages. There 
were three inhabitants in this dreary settlement — a 
Tamil, a Sinhalese and an old Kaffir ; the iii'st was the 
letvftni!, the second appeared to have bo duty»-.he had 
been engaged as timekeeper and store-man, but he 
had nothing to do in either capacity. As for the Kaf&r 
he was past his working days. The Jaffna Tamil 
was the only one of the three that knew English. 
The furnishing was ia harmony with the style of 
architecture — four posts stuck in the ground supported 
half-a-dozen small trees adzed square by way of table ; 
on each side of this structure was a concern 
constructed of "warichchis" supported in the same way 
as the table, covered with dry grass with mats over 
it : these were seats by day and beds by night. These 
structures were put up at one end of the larger 
unfinished room. As'the cooly had arrived with my 
carpet bag I was glad to get a wash and a change, after 
which I ate a hearty breakfast of better viands than I 
expected in such a desolate place. My P. D. stayed 
over the next day and showed me the coffee nursery 
the only other work that had been done, and gave 
me directions to select a site and build a set of cooly 
lines very soon as he expected to send me a supply 
of labour and with the parting advice to keep George, 
his Tamil servant, in good humour, as my comfort 
would entirely depend on him, I saw no more of him 
for six weeks and not a cooly arrived to do any 
work whatever. With the aid of the old Kaffir, I 
mudded up the walls of the smaller hut and made 
myself as comfortable as circumstances would admit. 
Towards the end of the second month of my solitary 
idle life, gangs of coolies began to arrive ; but they 
did not stop long— a week to ten days being about the 
time they stayed. And fully six months elapsed before 
I had no intervals of enforced idleness from want 
of labour. Meantime Mr. Wise's visits were few, short 
and far between. He lived in Kandy in a house he ren- 
ted in company with Wilson Ritchie's Visting Agent 
and he never spent a whole week on the estate all tha 
four years I was on it, though on nearly every visit 
he announced that he had come to stay. That first 
year of planting life was the most miserable of my life, 
but I made no complaint and set myself to learn 
my new work with all my might and found out how 
to do things without a teacher or exemplar. Wise 
went a good deal about, as he said, to gain experience 
from seeing other people's work ; but before a year 
had come and gone, I was aware that I knew much 
more of my business than he did. 
It was only 
IN THE SECOND YEAR 
that I got about fifty acres ready for planting and the 
following year something over twice as much was ready 
for planting About this time I had a bout of ill-health 
and had to ask for aid in the work. As I.fell ilia se- 
cond assistant had just arrived but he at first could be 
of little use. I had consulted Dr. Heed, and he advised 
a change. "Go to Kandy," he said, "eat beefsteak and 
drink porter : you are suffering from hard work and 
low living." I5y the by the low living was no choice 
of mine, but Wise having exempted his servant from 
my authority, he fed me on rice and '' karawadu '* and 
yet his master complained to me of the housekeeping 
which roused me to some self-assertion. I said that 
be charged the estate £'4 a month, for my board and 
wheresoever the expense came in my food had never 
cost him one-fourth of his charge and that hia 
servant and the clan he had gathered about him lived 
much better than I did. I was then entrusted with 
the supplies and within a month George and his clan 
were all off the place, but the evil to my health was 
already done. On my application for leave, Wise 
brought an old soldier with twelve months' experience 
to act during my absence. He did not invite me to 
take up my quarters in his house, but I had to go 
to an hotel. In three weeks I reported myself well 
enough to return to work. But to my no small 
surprise, I was directed to place myself under the 
orders of Mr. Freeman on my return. My first 
impulse was to decline to return at all ; but then 
I considered that there was still six months of mf 
original engagement to run and in good faith I must 
fulfil my contract, though as I then knew it waa 
not legally binding and in the meantime I could 
look out for other employment ; so I returaed to fiu^ 
