October i, 1S90,] 
THP TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
249 
musical talent, and the Emperor knowing of this 
sent him to Italy to be educated. He has visited 
Brazil several times, and last time a few months 
ago a committee arranged with a talented Company 
then in Bio to play his oparas in Rio, S, Paulo and 
Campinas, which they did to crowded houses. 
Campinas has its service of tramways, its gaswork, 
and at present a water supply is being provided 
for. But we must now leave Campinas and continue 
our journey farther on, the account of which we must 
leave for a day or two. A. SCOTT BLACKLAW. 
^ 
PLANTING IN THE MALAYAN PENINSULA ; 
PERAE. 
{From our Special Correspondent.) 
PERAK AND SELANGOR — WANT OE BRITISH ENTERPRISE 
AND CAPITAL — PERAK SUITED TO TEA AND COFFEE — 
ROAD COMMUNICATION AND OTHER CAPABILITIES FOR 
PLANTING — GOVERNMENT OFFERING LAND AND CAPI- 
TAL ON EASY TERMS TO BNCOUE GE CULTIVATION — THE 
CLIMATE AND SOIL— GENERAL FEATURES OF THE 
HILLS AND THE LAY OF LAND — FORESTS — COFFEE ON 
WATERLOO ESTATE AND ON ADJOINING PLANTATIONS — ■ 
INSECT PESTS NOT SO VIRULENT AS IN CEYLON — 
LIBERIAN COFFEE — CACAO CULTIVATION — SQUIRRELS — 
INDIARUBBER — CINCHONA — THE HERMITAGE BUNGALOW 
— PERAK TEA — PLANTING PROPSECTS. 
The good people in the Protected States of 
Perak and Selangor apparently don’t make noise 
enough — they don’t shout out sufficiently loud to at- 
tract British enterprise and capital. Possibly the 
greater number of the residents in these States 
do not particularly care to have a lot of out- 
siders running over the country, criticizing the 
position and comparing one State with another ; 
but if we are to suppose that the authorities 
are wishful — as they say they are — to facilitate 
the development of the resources of the country 
and to attract European settlers, it may respectfully 
be suggested they should take the trouble to say so, and 
say so in such a way that planters in the colonies 
and capitalists in Europe cannot fail to hear them. 
Let them take Oeylon for example and follow suit in 
the policy which has made her capabilities known 
to the uttermost parts of the earth.* How often 
have we heard discussions about suitable localities 
for agricultural investment, and when these Pro- 
tected States were mentioned the reply has 
been ; *' Oh 1 those native States, you never know 
where you are ; neither life nor property is 
safe when a ruffian of a native has the chance 
of getting anything by interference in your 
affairs.” To this assertion there is probably no 
reply, simply because people don’t know what in 
reality is the fact, that the Sultans of these 
states have no more to do with their admini- 
stration than have the editors of the Ceylon Observer. 
The young Sultan of Perak is a mere nonentity, 
and the decrepit old man who nominally holds a 
similar position at Selangor hardly ever visits 
the seat of Government (Kwala Lumpur), and has 
only done so three or four times since the British 
Government quietly intimated that he must be 
content to stand down. Were this state of affairs 
more widely known, and could capitalists at homo 
realize the fact that life and property are as 
* How ? Not by Government, but by the Planters 
and Press— an I very notably through the Tropical 
Af/ricnltiirist, which has sent the name of Ceylon and 
lier plauters and products all round the world. Bat 
Mr. Swettenham, in his recent report, contends that 
Government has done all that was possible to attract 
planters who refuse to come. The labour difficulty 
is the lion in tho path. — Ko. T. A. ^ 
:12 
safe in the States as they are in Ceylon, there 
would without doubt be a better chance of speedy de- 
velopment of the resources of the country than 
will otherwise be the case for many years to come. 
And then again as regards communication with 
the outer world, how very few there are — uncon- 
nected with the trade of these localities — who 
are aware that steamers run daily between 
Penang and Port Weld in Perak and three or four 
boats a week between Selangor, Penang and 
Singapore. 
Naturally in Ceylon more is known about these 
matters than is the case elsewhere, because there 
are so many Ceylon men in the Straits in all 
kinds of positions, from the Governor of the Straits 
Settlements to the cook at the Government Tea- 
garden Resthouse in Thaiping, 
In Perak there are hundreds of thousands of acres 
of fine forest inviting the axe of the planter — forest 
which the local Government is anxious to see taken 
up by suitable men with money enough to turn it 
into plantations of tea and coffee. They have led 
the way by going to great expense in planting ex- 
perimental gardens and growing tea, coffee, cacao, 
cinchona, pepper and indiarubber, as well as 
many kinds of fruit trees. The sites of these gar- 
dens, perhaps, have not been in every instance 
selected with great care, and are certainly in some 
cases very unsuitable for the purpose for which they 
were chosen; but even in this they were not with- 
out their use in showing what should be avoided 
as well as what should he availed of. Perak is 
already traversed in all directions with capital 
roads, and these are being extended as opportunity 
demands. A n w road is now in course of con- 
struction through an immense block of forest 
adjoining Thaiping, where the well-known property — 
Waterloo— stands as a sam-de of what can be done 
with coffee in that quarter. This road will be 
about thirty miles in length, made, be it noted, 
through the forests in advance of its probable sale 
at some future day. 
It is understood that the Government will alienate 
blocks of forest, up to 500 acres each, to the first 
five applicants, at the rate of one dollar an acre. 
It has even gone so far as to advance money towards 
the working of gardens and would probably do 
so again if a good case for assistance was made 
out in the case of those who took up the above- 
mentioned blocks ; but of course men are wanted 
who have sufficient capital to bring into profitable 
cultivation the lands they have acquired on such 
very easy terms. The climate seems admirably 
adapted for the cultivation of such products as tea, 
coffee and cacao, there being no long periods 
of drought nor yet any long spells of cold 
and wet, such as characterize the hill country of 
Ceylon during the South-West monsoon. The climate 
naturally differs slightly in distant parts of so 
extensive a country as Perak, but certainly not in 
the degree we are accustomed to in Ceylon, 
Mauritius, and India. 
Tne soil over the great extent of the hill- 
country of Perak closely resembles that of parts of 
Dimbula, Upper Ramboda and Madulsima, — a 
yellowish clayey soil which grows more red and 
more friable the higher you get up on the ranges. 
This soil is of immense depth, but there is 
apparently an absence of any large extent of rich 
brown mould, which we should call really fine soil 
in Ceylon. 
The general features of the hills are not sufficiently 
broken by precipices and rooky d6bris to admit of 
pockets and fields of rich soil which we find in most 
mountainous tracts of country. The lay of the land 
is often steep, but the surfaces not very rough. 
The rook that crops up is a line white granite, with 
