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THE TROPICAL AGEICULTUEIST. [Sept. 2, 1901, 
THE TRAGEDY OP COFFEE. 
We drink our coffee as a matter of course for 
breakfast ; we sip it coiiteuttedly after luucheon 
and dinner; but never a thought passes through our 
minds of the tragedy that may lie in the accus- 
tomed cup. Yet many a brave British lieart has 
been broken, and many a British life sacrificed in 
the struggle for the berry which we buy com- 
placently from our grocer, and grumble over when, 
over-roasted "or badly prepared, the beverage 
turns out too bitter for our taste. ]f our coffee 
be bitter, we ring the bell and the servant takes 
it away. If their coffee proves bitter they have 
to dririk that bitter drink to the last dregs, 
waiting silently until death shall remove them out 
of the loneliness of exile and close their eyes to 
the hopeless wreck of all youth's golden dreams. 
Xhey — those well-plucked British coffee-planters 
— have suffered defeat through no fault of their 
own. It was just the luck of life. They had to 
battle against Nature ; Nature was too strong for 
them : she remained the conqueror. Woe to the 
conquered ! 
Most of the coffee consumed in the United 
Kingdom comes from Ceylon and Southern India. 
Five-and-twenty years ago Ceylon was practically 
ruined as a coffee-producing country. Men, who 
two or three years previously had been accounted 
almost millionaires, found themselves face to face 
with absolute proverty. This was due to the 
appearance of a red fundus called the " hemileia 
vastatrix," which wasted thousands of acres under 
coffee. The long and glurious records of the Empire 
hold no more splendid illustration of grit and 
iron determination than the final triumph of 
Ceylon over this overwhelming disaster. There 
was no wailing, no thought of retreat, but first 
cinchona cultivation was tried, then tea-growing, 
and ne»v methods were introduced on the few sur- 
viving coffee plantations, until at last the tide 
turned, and prosperity reflowed, but in fuller 
flood than before. In South India the story of 
coffee growing reads the same, but with this 
difference. In the isle of spices the whole com- 
munity suffered simultaneously, on the mainland 
individuals have fallen one by one. 
Coffee and tea belong to the same natural 
order of plants, but, whereas tea is the easiest 
plant possible to cultivate, coffee is the most 
difficult. It needs a peculiar climate, one free 
from extremes of heat and of moisture. If too dry 
the shrub will not blossom freely, if too wet after 
a few years io falls an easy prey to one of the 
many pests that beset it. In India the virgin 
forest that clothed the Western ghats were 
selected. Young fellows with capital at their 
backs and enthusiasm in their hearts threw them- 
selves gladly into the enterprise. The life was 
lonely but adventurous, and visions of fortune 
danced before their eyes. Only a few, a 
very tew lucky ones, ever realised them. The 
forest soil was sodden with malaria. In the early 
days a mud hut, grass thatched, was the recog- 
nised planter's home. When the rains came, and 
for weeks the hills were enveloped in cloud and 
mist, he lived perpetually in sopping raiment. 
There wa."? no leaving the work then, for it was 
the time for planting out. So in utter loneliness 
he shivered and sweated when the fever gripped 
him ; no doctor within fifty miles ; his next-door 
neighbour live miles away. He vainly hoped for 
tetter days. One would die before his capital 
\ya« ha'f expended, another would live on till all 
his money was gone, his property mortgaged to 
thehik. Then followed forecbjsure. Perhaps he 
would receive a pittance to manage what he had 
formerly owned, or else the plantations on which 
his life's work had been spent, and to which 
health and fortune had been freely given, would 
be again swallowed up in the jungle. There are 
valleys in Southern India into which literally tens 
of thousands of pounds sterling have been poured, 
and fiom which not a dozen good crops have been 
picked. A more melancholy prospect than an 
abandoned coffee district can hardly be imagined, 
and the sadness of the scene deepens when it is 
remembered that every ruined plantation means 
at least one brave life broken in exile. 
The contrast between a thriving and a deserted 
district is not a whit greater than between life 
and death. There is no happier prospect tiian a 
planting district in full working order. Every acre 
has been won laboui iously, and at risk of death in 
thejungle. Lntil the European planter came, these 
acres of dark-green coffee bushes were the haunt 
of wild elephant, tiger and bear, and where to- 
day go up the sound of the healthiul toil and 
the bright laughter of children, formerly the 
silence was only b.okeri by the booming cry of 
the black monkfy and the hideous laughter of 
the solitary jackal. The coffee planter has done 
well for the land of his adoption, cruel step- 
mother though she has often proved herself. 
He has created a new industry ; he has given 
work at high wages to thousands who needed it ; 
has practically populated the solitudes, drawing 
the people from areas already too thickly crowded 
— war against nature no less than war againsk 
man has its roll of martyrs, of victims,- and of 
heroes, and the roll of coffee planting is brilliantly 
illustrated with many bright deeds of which the 
world has never heard and never will hear anything. 
The good work still goes forward in Ceylon and 
in South Africa, and has also now been extended 
to Central Africa. On the Shire Highlands coffee 
plantations have been opened by Europeans, and 
there again the white planter is proving himself 
a true philanthropist. 
Of recent years the coffee planter's life has been 
brighter. His bungalow nowadays is a pleasant 
brick house, embosomed in trees and surrounded by 
a garden An epoch of prosperity, all too brief, 
enabled him to make himself comfortable. Many 
married. But there has been a return of bad 
times. Prices have fallen when the seasons have 
been good, and short crops have not raised them. 
Tragedy still lurks in those hospitablebungalows. 
Coffee is a bitter brew for many a planter today. 
He seldom grumbles at fate, though constantly 
at the weather. He fights on to the last \vithou6 
a thought of surrender, and when the end comes, 
leaves behind a memory of silent endurance and 
unfailing courage, which all who knew him love 
to cherish. Over the lintel of the coffee planter's 
bungalow might be engraved those lines from 
Kipling's sorrowful song of exile : — 
"Oh, the toil that knows no breaking I Oh, the 
heimweh ceaseless aching ! 
Oh, the black dividing Sea and alien Plain ! 
Youth was cheap — wherefore we sold it ; GoU wai 
good— we hoped to hold it ; 
And today we know the fulness of onrgain." 
-Globe, July 9. 
