APRIL 1, 1904.] THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. 
667 
NOTES ON A TRIP TO KALUTAEA DISTRICT. 
OLD PLANTERS— NEW IMPROVEMENTS— LOCAL 
OFFICIAL WAYS COMPARED WITH INDIAN— LAND 
SALES IN CEYLON— THE RUBBER PROSPECTS. 
{Specially Contributed.) 
To revisit in after life tlie soenes of one's early 
labours is always interesting and brings black 
a flood of memories both . serious and gay — 
serious in the present instance on account of the 
struggles and striving and wrestling with ad- 
verse conditions of soil for the cacao and 
coffee we originally started planting with the 
usual results of heavy losses and ruined hopes ; 
and still more serious in respect of the 
havoc wrought by an unhealthy climate which 
resulted in the loss of many friends and fellow 
workers, both native and European, who " went 
under " in the struggle, or were driven away to 
other lands and better climes, to start life afresh 
when half the allotted span was run. 
But for those memories, my trip — to a district 
now second to none in the Island in the matter 
of prosperity, and whose climatic conditions are 
vastly improved and hospitality is boundless— 
would have been one of unalloyed pleasure. But 
those " dreamland faces " keep cropping up, and 
I am reminded of Lindsay Gordon's fine lines 
on the " Sick Stock Kider " — 
" In these hoars when life is ebbing, how those days 
when life was young 
Come back to us ; how clearly I recall 
Even the yarns Jack Hall invented, and the songs 
Jem Eoper sung ; 
And where are now Jem Roper and Jack Hall ? 
Aye I nearly all oar comrades of the old colonial 
school. 
Oar ancient boon companions, Ned, are gone ; 
Hard livers for the most part, somewhat reckless as 
a rale. 
It seems that yoa and I are left alone. 
I've had my share of pastime, and I've done my 
share of toil, 
And life is short— the longest life a span ; 
I care not now to tarry for the corn or for the oil, 
Or for the wine that maketh glad the heart of man. 
For good undone and gifts misspent and resolutions 
vain, 
'Xis somewhat late to trouble. This I know — 
I should live the same life over, if I had to live again; 
And the chances are I go where most men go." 
Of the men who worked with me in one district, 
some died in harness ; but a uumoer sleep their 
last sleep in the furthermost parts of His 
Majesty's dominions. 
SOME OF THOSE THAT HAVE GONE, 
Cosby Gray, killed by Dacoits in Burmah, left 
behind him a desperate story of selling his life 
dearly in the shape of thirty dead Burmans 
round his hastily improvised sagar of hoxes and 
baggage. Tommy Bell lies in Canada — "pleurisy," 
I think it was; he caught a chill at an elk hunt, 
and had little time to bid farewell to liis young 
I wife and family. Foulkes, au Eton boy and 
friend of Burnand of Punch, tried farming in 
j the Cape and when things went wrong, came to 
Ceylon to grow citrouella with a paper fortune 
lin fiont and a stout heart. He and Knight bore 
the heat and burden of the day for many years 
till they had again to "closedown," andEoulkes 
for a third time started life in Australia, where, 
working under the great disodvantages of mature 
years, and having to compete with not over-scrupu- 
lous competitors, he fell a victim to that terrible 
iialady— cancer. 
I 
81 
I went to see Old Avery, as we called him, 
on my return to Colombo, in the Home for the 
Aged. He will be eighty next month; and 
although he is very kindly treated, you could see 
how keen he is to get back to an estate. Talking 
of the Japanese, he said:— "I've fought there 
before, D. Do you think they would take me over 
now?" It was splendid !— and recalled to my mind 
the line words of the song ; — 
" I'd like to face the foe, 
Once again before I go, 
And fight beneath the dear old flag." 
Avery is au old man-o'-war's man. He was the 
hardest- working man I ever knew, and it is sad 
that he should not be the guest of the Planters' 
Association in the last stages of the journey. 
Knight, dear old Knight, is getting on in years 
too, but is well and happy with his relations 
and his pension in Somerset ; long may he livci 
am sure it would delight his heart to revisit 
Kalutara again, where the teartul enquiries of 
the Sinhalese showed how he was respected 
and how his memory is even now revered 
there. I think every European who started 
at the time I went there (1878), but Knight and 
Avery, is gone, and it is seemly that one should 
stop and lay a tribute on the graves of those 
Pioneers who were victims to a deathly climate, 
as Kalutara was in the early stages. 
A TERRIBLE DEATH RATE. 
I remember two black years with a death rate 
of between 80 and 90 coolies each year on 
one estate alone ; and I believe there have been 
worse cases even than that. I was delighted to find 
such an improvement in respect of prospects and 
profits, and health and comfort — so much so that 
one could hardly believe it to be the same district 
it was 28 years ago. Roads there are fair, and 
one steamboat, also a telegraph which it took 
Government more than ten years to get laid — it is 
over very easy country with light wooden posts. 
CEYLON GOVERNMENT BEHIND THE TIMES. 
Compare this with what the Indian Postmaster- 
General did for us in South India. I applied for a 
telegraph over 33 miles of very difficult country 
rising from 1,300 to 6,500 feet and then going 
down to 4,500. We were told we could get it if 
put in in 6 weeks, and with heavy rails as posts 
the job was finished in six weeks, over quite aa 
difficult country as from Ratnapura to Maskeliya 
via Adam's Peak. It was finished on the forty- 
second day, and the Kalutara line took ten years 
to get a vote passed for a work not one-tenth 
as difficult and whicli must pay well. When 
one sees sickening delays of this kind, when 
one knows that the same officials, who cannot see 
their way to providing what every civilised country 
lias got, waste or allow the natives to waste 
thousands of pounds annually in cutting down 
valuable areca-nut trees to erect pandals to glorify 
those same individuals! It is in momencs of 
reflection over matters of this kind that one thinks 
it might after all be advantageous to see Ceylon 
tacked on to India, where at less cost they 
do far more work. To think that it took 10 years 
to get a tiny telegraph wire 10 miles long laid to 
an important district like Kalutara is extraordin- 
ary—especially if you compare it with a country 
like Java where they have telephones to every 
bungalow and one can speak to one's neighbours, 
or send ofi a telegram by telephone at all times to 
any part of the world. 
