Nov. 1, 1901. J 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
323 
PL^ANTING " DAYS OF OLD" 
IN CEYLON. 
BY A VETERAN WHO ROSE FROM S. D. 
TO BE CHAIRMAJS OF THE P. A., AND 
M. L. C; 
BUT NOT TO MAKE £50,000! 
1864-5 AND 1901. 
Thank you very much for sending me so 
promptly a copy of the " 1901 Ceylon Hand- 
book and Dii'ectory," which is to nie most 
interesting and which I find almost as ne- 
cessary as when I lived m Ceylon. I have be- 
side me while I write — I have unearthed it for 
purposes of comparison— your Handbook and 
Directory of 1864-65, which I remember con- 
sidering at the time a most imperfect and 
inaccurate work because I had been a few 
months in Ceylon before it came out, and 
my name did not appear in it. 1 suppose I was 
fonder of seeing my name in print then than 
I am now, and felt the disappointment. 
But despite this (to me) great blemish, I am 
prepared at the present moment to pass an 
examination in 1864-65 Handbook against any 
man living, the Editor not excepted !* 
At that time I lived in the usual Sinne 
Durai's mud-hut with a library consisting 
of a Bible and Prayer-book, Smile's Self- 
help, Burns' Poems and a few greasy yellow- 
backs which had been read and re read, and 
often by the dim light of a cotton wick 
floating in coconut oil in the inverted top 
of a bottle as a red pedestal, have I read 
myself to sleep over the Ceylon Directory. 
To go to sleep once, when reading a book 
is a doubtful compliment to the author ; to 
go to sleep many times over the same book 
is the highest compliment you can pay him. 
How times have changed in those thirty six 
years is vividly brought before me by your 
new Directory. A generation of planters 
and merchants has almost passed away ; 
districts and estates have changed their 
names and vanished from view ; the 
only things which strike me as not having 
changed are the native names of estates. 
I began life in Ceylon under Bas Gray on 
Algooltenne, the situation being procured 
for me by my good old frieiid ;ind neighbour 
in Aberdeenshire, W. D. Gibbon. I think 
George Beck and myself are the sole sur- 
vivors of the Hunasgiriya 1 knew at that 
time. I moved on from there to Gona Adika: 
Spencer Shelley and myself are the only 
survivors I know, of the Kadugannawa of 
that time. I look back with great pleasure 
on . my Sinne Durai days; there wjis not 
much expected of Assistants inthn;-.; days 
and though salaries were small, a rupee was 
worth 2s, and we had enough for our wants. 
Beer was sometimes 21s per dozen, so we 
did not drink it ; but occasionally when a 
neighbouring Sinne Durai came on a Saturday 
night, a bottle of bazaar brandy— which 
seemed nectar then, but would be poison 
now— was procured. 
I was fiedged as a Periya Durai on Kinrara ; 
but when 1 had been there a couple of 
months, I was sent down to take charge of 
* Well done ! and yet we can recall many months of 
toil over that old-fashioned volume which stands 
Number 6 in our list,— Ed. T^A. 
Mahaberiatenne and Keenegahawella in the 
Dumbara Valley. George Greig and H. G. Mac- 
kenzie, now in London, were my neighbours, 
a.nd after two yetirs of Dumbara, I was promo- 
ted to the management of the Pendleton Group 
of estates where I remained for five years. 
In 1873 I made my first investment : in Mal- 
vern estate, one of the group I had been 
managing. I bought early in the year when 
parchment coffee was worth about 14s per 
bushel and before the end of the year 25s and 
even 26s, I think, was paid for coffee. The 
result was that the value of the crop was 
considerably more than I paid for the estate, 
and the latter I sold immediately afterwards. 
I think it must have been about this 
time that, at a social function, I said two 
things which I have very often been J,t wit- 
ted with since:— 1st, That every twenty- 
year-old planter should be shot to make 
room for younger men, as if he had not 
made his fortune in twenty years, he could 
not be much good. 2nd, That I had come to 
Ceylon to be Chairman of the Planters' As- 
sociation, Member of the Legislative Council 
-and to make £50,000 ! 
1 lived long enough in Ceylon to modify 
the first statement, and I did not succeed 
in carrying out the last clause of the second. 
From Pendleton I moved to Dimbula and 
Dikoya, and my life is much brightened by 
many friendships formed there. 
Your Directory always carries me back to 
days far away, but they seem but yesterday, 
and it creates in me a great longing to re visit 
Ceylon, which I live in hope of some day 
doing. Again thanking you for the big 
volume, which not only serves the practical 
purposes of today, but awakens pleasant 
memories of the past.— J. L. S. 
CINCHONA. 
Mr. John H Stallman, of New York, is the 
author of a brief but interesting article on " Peru- 
vain Bark a.s viewed from a Commercial stand- 
point," which appears in the July number of the 
Journal of Pharmacology . The article is mainly 
historical, and although Mr. Stallman finds a 
difficulty in sayinp' anythingnew, he deals concisely 
with the data of the industry up to the present 
time. Mr. Stallman calls attention to the enor- 
mous increase in the consumption of cinchona of 
late years. The average annual production of bark 
in all countries twenty years ago, he says, was 
about 6,000,000 lb ; in 1890 the production had 
increased to over 18,000,000 lb, which seems to 
have been the high-water mark. In 1900 the pro- 
duction was not over 14,C00,000 lb, but of a high 
test, while the accumulated stocks in Europe had 
become much reduced. Appended to the article is 
an extract from a London price-list which says : 
To sum up, it appears that consumption has at 
last overtaken production, and increased shipments 
from Java will be required to supply manufacturers 
and make up for the expected deficiency from British 
East India and Ceylon, and in any case we fancy 
the days of quinine selling below Is per oz. a)'- num- 
bered, and we think it safe to prophesy that the 
average value of the unit during the next three years 
will be above the average of IPGG-yS. The present 
state of the cinchona and quinine markets do not now 
seem to favour ttiis view, especially if the increased 
shipments from Java {which already show an excess 
of 1,710,000 Amsterdam lb over 1900) should continue 
— Chemist and Druggist, Aug. 24. 
