78 
THfi* t^DPlDAL AGRICULTURIST. 
f A ugust r, 1890, 
TEA AND CINCHOJfA IN CEYLON. 
THE TEA AND CINCHONA ENTEEPRISE OF MESSRS, KEIE, 
BDNDAS & CO. ON LOODE CONDEEA AND MR. JAMES 
Taylor’s meeitoeioes part therein. 
The discussion regarding a testimonial to Mr. 
James Taylor justifies the publication of the 
following letter. It was put into type and our 
note written in Feb, 1878, that is twelve years 
ago last Feb. (1) ; but it was held back, we think, 
because Mr. Taylor feared his employers might 
object to the publication of the details. Now, we 
consider that the document is an important 
contribution to the History of the Tea and Cinchona 
Enterprise in Ceylon. 
Loole Condera. February 16th, 1878. 
A. M. Ferguson, Esq., and J. Ferguson, Esq. 
My dear Sirs,— I have to thank you kindly for 
your very favourable notice of our Loole Condera tea 
in a late Observer. It is now being made of a better 
average quality than before. But it will not be all it 
should be till we get it in larger quantity so as to 
require a European or good conductor to constantly 
supervise the manufacture. I can see only very little 
of it, and beyond that it is left to a kangany and 
the coolies. But such a notice of it in the Observer 
is very valuable. I must explain to you, however, 
that bad tins have been got by people frequently, 
not from any fault on the estate but by a mistake in 
Kandy. I used to send a lot of it toKandy,to Messrs.Keir, 
Dundas and Co.’s oflBoe, in large caddies, not soldered 
up ; understanding that they were selling it by the 
lb loose or untinned. But they took to putting it in 
tins and soldering these up in Kandy. I supposed 
that this would not do, and stopped it as soon as I heard 
of it , or heard of tea Deing so spoiled. It soon gets 
damp in the caddies, and I fancy got more damp still in 
being transferred from them to tins where they had no 
firing places to dry it first. Not only this, but they 
apparently tinned up “ red leaf” too ; and that also 
damp. I send several caddies of ” red leaf” at the end 
of each year’s crop, with special explanations of its 
inferiority and instructions to keep it apart and dis- 
pose of it in any way or at any low price they choose. 
Some of these tins it would seem were still ia their 
bands recently, and may be yet. They themselves 
Bent out three of them that had been returned by Dr. 
Thwaites, of Peradeniya, quite recently, and asked me 
to explain the matter ! Two of these tins were 
red leaf purehj, and perfectly mouldy; the other 
tin being proper tea but also perfectly mouldy. 
Seeing I never tinned any red leaf, I had no 
diflSculty in saying that it was tea tinned in Kandy 
and spoilt in being so. But it is long since I stopped 
sending them any loose tea now, excepting the little 
“red leaf” collected during the year at the end of 
each crop, which will still go forward open. All of 
it is tinned on the estate now. I have also got the 
tins made so that they must be destroyed in the 
opening, as I found that people kept their tea in the 
tins, or let their servants do it, and consequently the 
tea got spoiled and often mouldy and musty before the 
tin was finished ; especially in damp weather. This 
made some peonle believe that we put bad tea into 
the bottom of "the tin and good tea on the top ! 
K., D. & Co., too, stopped taking back our first style of 
tins with hinged lids, as they were generally returned 
filthy and stinking of oil and onions and salt fish,&c. 
But now, I am going to be down on you! Al- 
though you have publicly given us credit for various 
things connected with tea and cinchona, some of which 
were i o fairly due to us, yet yon have never given 
UB credit for the main things that are our due. I 
claim that both the tea and cinchona enterprisrs 
were first sucoesafully started on Loole ('ondera. I 
do not admit the Messrs. Worms’ old tea experi- 
ments into the matter, as they were failures; and long 
ago given up when we began. The plants were allowed 
to remain, but there were many tea plants in gardens, 
and BO on, over the coffee districts besides them. 
The starter of the present tea enterprise was, to the 
best of my knowledge, Mr. G. D. B. Harrison, who, 
in 1865, gave me orders to get all the tea seed I 
could from Peradeniya and grow it so as to have a 
supply of seed from it by-and-bye. I'began in 1866, 
to plant out tea plants along the roadsides here- 
At that time I knew nothing of the Assam indige- 
nous and hybrid varieties. Our first tea clearing of 
twenty acres was felled in the end of 1867, a year 
before the Ceylon Company felled any land of their 
estates for tea. Our clearing was mentioned in the 
Kandy Herald, at the time it was felled. The Ceylon 
Company felled small pieces on several of their places 
the year after, perhaps as much, or may be more, 
acreage than our clearing altogether. However, our 
first year’s importation of seed from Assam completely 
failed to grow. We got our second importation of 
seed next year at the same time as the Ceylon Com- 
pany got their first and both grew. So that they 
and we both began the actual planting out of hybrid 
tea at the same time, or same season. Then as for 
making tea I was making it from old bushes in the 
garden and from roadside planing years bsfore Mr. 
Jeukins, the Ceylon Company’s tea manager, came to 
Ceylon. Some of what I made then was fairly good 
tea though I could not believe it was right because 
it did not taste like the China tea of the shops. I 
gladly confess that Mr. Jenkins, after he came, showed 
me how to do it better and gave me confidence in the 
article. But a sample made by me before he came, sent 
along with a sample of his making, was valued in Cal- 
cutta at only 3d a lb. less. Before Mr. Jenkins gave me 
confidence that the tea was correct, I spoiled large lots 
of it experimenting, trying to make it taste like the tea 
I bought in Kandy from shops. 
You will see from this that a statement in one of 
your Directories of tea acreage planted is wrong for 
the earlier years. There was more planted than you 
state ; but I|cannot find that statement in the Directory 
now, else I would help to correct it. But on this place 
there were twenty acres planted, besides roadsides equal 
to a good few acres, before the end of 1869. 
Then, as regards Cinchona : we were not the first to 
plant a patch of it, though we planted five or six 
acres of it pretty early. But the small lot men- 
tioned in Howard’s big book as the “ first instal- 
ment from the Ceylon plantations” was peeled on Loole 
Oondura in July 1867, both Succirubra and OfBcinalis, 
But so little did K., D, & Co. trouble themselves about 
it that it only got into the market in April 1868. It was 
mentioned in several papers that I saw about the time 
and I knew it was our sample they referred to from the 
remarks made, being the same as Howard’s report on 
it that I had got, and from dates and the quantities 
corresponding, and the words of Howard’s report being 
quoted. One paper or magazine put it down as from 
the Ceylon Government experiment. Our first exten- 
sive peeling was in April 1870, of considerably over a 
ton of dry bark, partly succirubra and partly officinalis. 
Long after this was sold in the London market, the 
Observer mentioned that it had discovered the fact 
from a Home paper and asked how such a thing could 
have happened anknown to it. We sent home further 
lots in 1871 and 1873. As a result of the sale of the first 
lots, we got all the officinalis plants out of the Hakgala 
nurseries, even the old stock plants, about three 
hundred thousand altogether, and got them for nothing, 
as there was no demand for cinchona by anyone 
else. We then went in for planting cinchona exten- 
sively ; but we had considerably extended our cultiva- 
tion of it before that on the strength of the sales and 
Howard’s report on our original sample. Not very 
long after cinchonas planted at Hakgala were being 
sold at high prices, but the demand was mostly for 
succirubra plants, of which we had tak<-n none. So that 
our having cleared out the stock of officinalis plants did 
not, I suppose, much matter What we have done here 
has been a guide and a warning to others all along, 
and is so still, and a great deal of cinchona and also 
tea, I believe, has been planted on the strengrh of it. 
What we have learned here has been freely communi- 
cated to all who have asked information. If you will 
allow me to say it without thinking that I have any 
selfish object in view, 1 consider that, if the Oeylon 
Goveenmeut bad any sort of eoul io it to oBcooraga 
