Aug. 1, 1899.] THE TROPICAL AGEICULTURIST. 
79 
enough to send me the check-roll by bearer, and 
attend muster tomorrow morning when I will give you 
your orders for the day, and the charge of a gang. I 
have also to inform you that your services will not be 
required after the end of next month." 
I promptly replied : — 
"I send yon the check-roll as ordered. I will leave 
the estate tomorrow. " 
Among other gentlemen that had visited the estate 
and been shown round it by me were two of the ablest 
and most respected members of the planting body in 
the persons of Captain Jolly and Mr. George Pride, 
from each of whom I had received a nearly identical 
communication, namely, to let them know if I found 
occasion to change my service. I at once wrote to 
Capt. Jolly that 1 was now at liberty to accept 
an engagement. He answered by requesting me to 
visit him at his residence in Katugastota. I walked 
to Kandy the next day and paid my visit the following 
morning. I found with him Mr. Fairey, one of his 
partners*, and they had already arranged to com- 
mence operations on land adjoining Barcaple and 
running high up on the Ritigala mountain and I was 
at once appointed to the operative part of the busi- 
ness on a salary E50 higher than I had in my 
former situation. Thus a second time the enmity 
of Wise had brought me advancement and no good to 
himself. 
It was nearly two months after my dismissal that 
Mr. Maitland arrived. What passed between him and 
Wise was never revealed ; but the latter departed bag 
and baggage within a week in company with a little 
rascal known as C W . He set up as a com- 
mission agent, but the firm did not prosper. Paterson 
was put in charge of the estate — a post he held for 
many years. Mr. Maitland made the estate his head- 
quarters and lived on familiar terms with all classes 
in the district. At first I did not venture to call on him 
not being very sure of a welcome ; but he came to see 
me and talked to me as if nothing had come between 
us since the old days in Mincing Lane, but for some 
time the name of Wise was not mentioned in our con- 
versations. But at length he told me that he had 
received reports about both Wise and myself from 
several parties in the island, and he thought they 
gave me more credit than was due to me. I replied 
that I could have no opinion as to what was written 
about either of us by outsiders ; and though my position 
was never a pleasant one, but now that 1 was safely out 
of it, I would never say one word either in defence or 
accusation. 
The superintendent of a neighbouring estate had 
built a grand bungalow and issued invitations to a 
great 
HOUSE-WARMING FEAST 
on Christmas Day. Mr. Maitland asked Paterson if he 
was going. He replied that he had not been asked and 
he believed that only resident proprietors or those who 
might become so were invited. 
" Well, then", he said, " we will have a rival feast on 
the same day, and I doubt not ours will be the merriest 
of the two. Send invitations to all the Scottish super- 
intendents and assistants in the neighbourhood." 
Nine of us sat down to that dinner and a very 
pleasant night we hid, as I well remember, and first-rate 
company our host proved himself. But the thing that 
amused us was a capital imitation of the voice and 
manner of host of the rival feast then going forward 
on the other side of the valley. He had only been in 
his company for half-an-hour, but he had caught 
the man's big boastful voice and loud self-glorification 
exactly and reproduced him in all his iguorance and 
vulgarity very much to the delight of his guests, to 
every one of whom he had given dee^J offence by his 
impudent self-assertion. 
Mr. Maitland's health began to fail before he had 
been many months in the Island, but he held on till 
he became really very ill : so he left the estate one 
morning and rode to Gampola where he took the 
coach to Kandy. Mr. Albrecht of Ing-oya was his fellow 
passenger ; he t oo was very ill and died at Kandy. Tiie 
After whom of course " Faireylaad, was called.— Ed. 
same night Mr. Maitland took an extra coach to 
Colombo where he arrived at daylight next morning, 
only to die during the same evening. 
He had parted finally with Wise, but had neglected to 
recall his power of attorney : so he returned and took 
possession of the estate. He too was doomed. Never of 
a robust constitution — some years of reckless dissipa- 
tion had done its work. Paterson who had toadied him 
in the days of his power, now set him at naught having 
reached the position he had aimed at from the first 
and knew that the restored reign would be a short 
one. No one in Ceylon had suspected that Mr. 
Maitland's affairs were left in an unsatisfactory state ; 
but there appeared to be such a state of things that 
only the Court of Chancery could disentangle. Mr. 
David Wilson was appointed local administrator and 
his first act was to dismiss Wise who then in an 
almost moribund state, got a second class passage for 
himself and his family. He died at sea and his mother- 
in-law died two days after. Mr. Maitland's hered- 
itary estate was sold for the benefit of the creditors 
but it did not go out, of the family being purchased by 
an uncle who had made a fortune in New York and the 
coffee estate was ultimately bought by Sir James 
Elphinstone. Thus the coffee enterprise first ruined 
and then killed the two men that brought me into 
contact with it. 
CAPTAIN JOLLY, 
under whom I served for fourteen years, was 
a gentleman by birth and breeding. He entered 
the Mercantile Marine Service of the East India 
Company and was first Lieutenant to Captain Dalrym- 
pie, when the Company sold their fleet, after which 
he commanded one of the ships under the new owners 
in the same trade, which he gave up for coffee planting 
in connection with Macvicar, Burn & Co., of Bjmbay. 
He purchased land in various districts and opened four 
estates — one in Hantane, one in Matale, one in upper, 
and one in lower, Bulatgama. The two first were 
successes: the two latter failures from natural causes of 
which we had no previous knowledge and that were 
beyond our control. I did the best work that was in 
me. In two years 
300 ACRES WEKE PLANTED 
and weeded monthly. Hopes ran high till the period of 
crop yielding arrived when they began to fall year by 
year till they reached zero. When it became certain 
that with the most economical expenditure the place 
would barely pay, its way, I had several reasons to 
desire a change. I had got no advance of salary for 
seven years, and had not the face to ask for it under 
the circumstances. I was confident that in a suitable 
climate my experience would bring better results 
for myself as well as my employers. I had 
married in 1851 a young girl belonging to an 
old Dutch family, who quickly lost her health in that 
cold rainy climate and had to go to the lowcountry 
always — after a few months on the estate. What with 
the cost of travelling in those days and our separate 
living on such occasions, I found my income hardly 
equal to my necessary expenses. I therefore applied 
to Captain Jolly then a partner in the firm of George 
Wall & Co., to give me an appointment in another 
district. The only one open was Yakdessa, but as it 
was then a shuck place and quite as rainy asAtherton, 
I declined it. In the middle of January 1855, 
however, I received an order to give over charge of 
Atherton to a young Eurasian in his employ and 
attend him in Kandy at once. My family was down 
in Kalutara at that time, so that I was without 
encumbrance and started next day. It appeared that 
the superintendent of Poengalla in Matale Bast had 
been drunk in a neighbour's bungalow for three 
weeks in the middle of crop and everything on the 
estate was in the utmost disorder. In the course of 
my 14 years of planting, I had seen neglected and 
mismanaged places, but 
POENGALLA CROWNED ALL. 
The soil was all that could be wished and the coffee was 
eleven years old on the oldest fields : not only had it 
mads no return to the absent proprietor but he had 
advanced money to carry it on every year. The agents 
