820 THE TROPICAL AGEICULTURIST. | June 1. 1899. 
in public as well as in commercial and planting 
affairs. Mr, Boyd (or a relative, Capt. Boyd ?) is 
credited with having made the first shipment, 
of coconut oil from Ceylon. We may mention 
in passing, that Itobcrt Boyd Tytler also came 
out in this same year 1837, in the service of 
Messrs, Ackland &. Boyd, in order to introduce the 
Westlndian system of coffee cultivation into Dum- 
bara and other districts, he (Mr. Tytler) having 
served an apprenticeship in Jamaica. 
To return to the subject of onr Memoir, we 
may now let Mr. Capper speak for himself in 
the following very interesting autobiographical 
narrative : — 
" When I landed in the Island in 1837, the coffee 
industry was just coining to the front ; whilst sugar 
was scarcely an article of daily concern, I had little 
or nothing to do with either one or the other ; 
and my first business ou bchiilt of the then woU- 
known firm of Ackland and Boyd was the care 
of the firm's books. Two years later, however, my 
services were brought into requisition for the super- 
vision of some extensive Cinnamon properties 
at Kadiraua, nearNegombo, totalling in the aggre- 
gate some 3,000 acres. If I knew nothing of 
the cultivation of this spice, I was but in a simi- 
lar plight to others, and I managed to expend largely 
in coolies' wages,* 
" At Kadirana T resided about five years, and 
eventually took charge of the firm's Oil Mills in 
Colombo, and besides took the supervision of 
their general Export business into the intricacies 
of which sonichow I managed to obtain an insight. 
Later on I was on trial as a junior partner 
taking charge of the entire Export business of the 
firm. In 1848 a crisis in the affairs of nearly all 
Ceylon business houses gave a check to my 
career ; the firm had to suspend payment, and 
after two years spent in the service of the then 
Shipping Company of the place, I took my de- 
parture for England on the " Alice Maud." 
In 1851 I was appointed to represent the Island 
at the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, but with 
a sorry show of Ceylon Industries, 
"My means were now recruited by writing for 
Dickens in his new venture HouscJiold Words, in 
the pages of which I continued to furnish chapters 
of Eastern life more or less successfully. I, about 
the same time, also undertook the Sub-Editor- 
ship of the Globe, to which I was appointed by 
Colonel Torrens, the then proprietor : this how- 
* " In order to illustrate the fallacy of the old- 
fashioned belief that the iiidigenons industries of a 
tropical country can ba most successf ally worked by 
natives, I may state that when I took over charge 
of the Kadiraua Oiuuamon Gardens I was warned 
that Europeans were ignorant of the mysteries of 
spice cultivation, and when I selected an experi- 
mental block of ten acres of cinnamon land by 
no means the bust on the estate for high cultivation, 
and began putting the pruning knife into the 
bushes, ruin to their production was predicted. The 
actual result was that in four years I brought np the 
yearly produce from three-fourths of a bile to nine 
bales an acre, with the result that the London Agents 
forbade any further work on that system on the plrce, 
aa it would flood the market and tend to lower 
the price of the spice,"— J.C, 
ever was not my first venture at London Journal- 
ism, as I had in 1834 assisted in launching 
the first paper devoted to Mining and Railway 
matters, the Miiiiiig aiid Steam Navigation Gazette, 
which proved a success, I. at the same time, 
had worked on the stafl of the Spectator under 
Rintonl, the founder of that journal, 
" In 18.52 whilst on the Globe, I wrote and brought 
out an octavo volume profusely illustrated — 'The 
Three Presidencies of India' — which was a marked 
success, the East India Company's Charter being 
just then under discussion. At this time, too, I 
began writing for the stage and successfully, but 
my work in that direction was so opposed to the 
wishes of my family, the stage being regarded 
as a rather discredited connection, and soon after- 
wards my labors were devoted to quite another 
channel by my departure for India, where, having 
succeeded in greatly improving the then little known 
jute fibre, I proceeded to (.'alcutta and started Steam 
Spinning and Weaving Mills at Scrampore, I set in 
motion the first jute-weaving machinery, which pro- 
mised a fortune in the near future, for whilst thou- 
sands of tons of jute cuttings lay abuut the yards of 
jute shippers, who were glad to get rid of the 
incumbrance at the rate of six-pence per maund 
of 80 lb., it was worked into yarn worth ten times 
that amount. An enormous trade soon sprung 
up ; but, alas ! our dreams of fortune were scattered 
to the winds by the Indian Mutiny, which 
just then broke out and cut off our supplies of 
the raw material. Of course, those who, having 
capital in abundance and could afford to bide their 
time, were content to wait for the collapse of the 
Mutiny ; but this was not my case, and making 
over the concern to my partner Ackland, I bade 
adieu to Calcutta and once more sought the 
familiar shores of Ceylon, where another phase of 
my chequered career met me. This was in 1838 ; 
and as it happened I found the Ceylcn Times 
on its last legs, and at once set to work to nego- 
tiate for its purchase from the nominal proprie- 
tors, Messrs. Wilson, Ritchie & Co, It signified 
nothing that I was without capital ; but I had, 
what was in those days, nearly as good, any amount 
of credit ; for the competition amongst the banks, 
for business of almost any kind, was extreme. 
"Those were golden days for the needj- .specula- 
tor, and of this latter class there was no lack ; 
as one Kandy Manager said : — ' Plenty of stiff 
plea.ses the head Johnnies, and it looks well on 
paper,' But, alas ! they had rather too much 'stiff' 
in the end. It was an unhealthy state of banking 
business when your appu's name on a pro-note 
was as good as that of any European and sometimes 
better! — when estates could be bought on credit 
for the utmost amount which friendly Estate 
Agents chose to place against them and no ques- 
tions asked ; and when they were paid for by the 
convenient iredirun of ' stiff.' It is true that 
half of the Central Province would have remained 
under forest had these conditions been otherwise, 
and well do I remember the saying of one go- 
ahead young planter declaring that he was so 
deeply in debt to his Agents that he had no 
alternative but to buy another estate which he 
found no difficulty in having appraised for sale 
at something like thirty per cent, above its actual 
value. lu those days estate valuers were fre- 
quently very obliging ! 
" There were at that time many roral roads 
to fortunes ; amongst them were the charges levied 
by Colombo Agents on the preparation and ship- 
ment of Coffee, The consolidated amount was 
