July 1, 1901.] THE TROPICAL 
AGKICULTUEIST. 
DOLOSBAGE IN 1889 AND 1901. 
(By an old Planting Correspondent.) 
DoLOSBAGE.— One of my old districts, with 
its Bible Rock and Sentry Box, are in sight 
and, with elevation, the mornings and even- 
ings are much cooler and enjoyable. 
DIFFERENT ESTATES— NOW AND THEN. 
CooROONDOOWATTA was reached at midday 
and my old friend, A. J S., gave me a hearty 
welcome, making me feel as much at home 
as he did down in the Fiji Islands. 
We visited quite a new estate, called 
" Jak-Tree-Hill," next morning; in going 
there from Cooroondoowatta I had to re- 
trace my steps towards Vellekande and de- 
scend a considerable distance into a deep 
valley, passing a few native tea gardens and 
Sinhalese villages— then the new bungalow 
appeared in sight and we made straight for 
it only to get a view of the country around, 
Mr Blackett being absent in Elngland. Jak- 
Tree-Hill is not only a valuable tea estate 
of over 200 acres, but is quite a Botanical 
Garden with shade trees and palms in pi'ofusion. 
Near the tea factory we came on some mango- 
steen trees in blossom ; they bore a few dozen 
last year ; cacao was doing remarkably well 
under the shade of fruit trees. 
The factory is new with all improved 
machinery and Mr. Stephens has adopted 
his method of continuous hessian tats for 
withering. The battens at the ends are 
about eight inches and the whole jute 
hessian must be stretched tight ; this system 
is a good one, preventing much waste of 
jute hessian and extra carpenter's work at 
the stanchions. There is an oil-engine driving 
power here and everything goes on satis- 
factorily under the able supervision of Mr. 
A J Stephens. 
Cooroondoowatta is well suited for a 
tea estate, being a gentle undulation and 
easy to dig and manure ; the old terracing 
of the coffee thirty years ago, black with 
age, supports the tea round the edges of 
roads and on hill sides. Timber trees are 
plentiful, including mango, jak, breadfruit, 
wild artocarpus, sapu, grevilleas, acacias, 
papaw, plantains, and palm trees. 
In the factory we ttnd some 17 or 18 chulahs 
as well as a sirocco. The chulah-fired teas 
are of good flavour and preferred to 
machine-made teas. At the beginning of 
tea manufacture in India and Ceylon, many 
planters were of opinion that chulah firing 
was preferable to the sirocco and that the 
fumes of charcoal were directly beneficial to 
tea-making ; what is the oijinion you have 
formed on this subject? (I remember when in 
Assam, acting as your Special Correspondent, 
that' very many, if not all, theplantc rsof Assam 
used chulahs and charcoal fires. This was in 
1876. )*The cultivated area of Cooroondoowatta 
is three hundred and seventy acres, all under 
tea. With other charges, Mr. Stephens is 
managing about seven hundred acres of tea. 
Forking has been done here to advantage and 
there is a good flush on the bushes at the 
• Some of the London Brokers to this day regret 
tlie gradoal disappearance of chulah-fired teas. — Eb. 
T.A. 
present moment. Hapugahawatta is a good 
piece of tea, but not iindulacing like Cooroon- 
doowatta ; there is a drop down to the paddy 
fields belovi^ and an awful stiff climb up. How- 
ever, A..r.S. looks in good condition, consider- 
ing the amount uf exercise he gets in a very 
steamy climate. It was a nice little walk 
up to Medegoda from Cooroondoowatta by 
short cuts, crossing a deep stream and climb- 
ing over slab rocks— my box cooly was a 
good fellow and helped me through all right. 
We had a coconut at a village and he got 
quite communicative ; during the course of 
conversation in Tamil, Ramasamy expressed 
his views on the situation and the decline 
in the price of teas ; he, Ramesamy, got a 
little mixed up about the war in South Africa 
and told me that so many gentlemen had 
been killed in the war that there was nobody 
left to drink tea and hence the sudden fall 
in prices ; happy-go-lucky Kamasamy— his 
ideas of the outside world are very limited. 
Medegoda is over 200 acres of tea. Coolies 
were clearing the drains and the estate looked 
well with some nutmeg trees in bearing and 
cacao thriving. We passed the bungalow and 
got into Wewekelle over the ridge. Wewe- 
kelle, the old place of Dr. Shipton, is now ab- 
sorbed in the Tamaravelly group. We crossed 
the wide stream or river running below it 
and ascended Epplewatta on the other side. 
Old Stanmore Hill is forgotten in the Tamil 
name of Tamaravelly. By-the-by we noticed 
disease in the Lantana or wild Verbena ; it 
is black with disease, a kind of bliglit. The 
planters must keep ic clear of their boundaries 
or it will get into the tea. "Everybody" 
told me it did not hurt the tea, but unfor- 
tunately 1 found it very bad on some tea and 
hope it will not spread into tea as H.V. did 
into coffee. It would be good to cut it out 
and burn it in time. Lantana seeds very 
freely and spreads fast in chena lands and 
patana. There is not much in Dolo&bage and 
it would not cost much to get rid of it at 
once. 
Pen-y-Lan or Balatakanda with over 500 
acres of tea is still to the fore and possesses 
some old tea planted in the forties by Mr. 
Lewellyn ; some of that tea still exists and 
measures two feet circumference of stem, and 
there is a bush measuring about thirty-six 
feet in circumference. Mr. W R Tringham 
has borne the heat and burden of the day in 
Ceylon, numbering his 35 years' experience in 
coifee, tea, and cinchona, and looks well and 
hearty. There is a good distance between 
the factory and the bungalow and the writer 
did not go down to the factory, but proceeded 
on to Kellie over the next gap, passing through 
some seed-bearing trees to the new bunga- 
low. The Kellie group factory is a very- 
large one with both water and steam power ; 
the water-wheel is thirty feet in diameter 
or ninety in circumference ; the steam engine 
works the balance of the machinery and the 
three rollers and sifting machines may be 
seen all working at the same time. There was 
difficulty in getting up the boiler and elephants 
had to be employed. The Superintendent has 
good reason to be proud of his factory, 
as also of a flat field of tea, giving thirteen 
hundred pounds of leaf per annum per acre. 
