<X3 MONTHLY. 
";V' 
Vol. XVII.] COLOMBO, DECEMBER isx, 1897. [No. 6. 
“PIONEERS OF THE PLANTING ENTERPRISE IN CEYLON,” 
(Second Series.) 
CHARLKS SHANDS 
PLANTER xiND MERCHANT 1842 to 1890. 
OT many coloni.sts now living 
have had a longer connection 
with tl.e island of Ceylon than 
(,'HAELES Shand, the Subject 
of our brief memoir. Mr. 
Shand’s grandfather, a na- 
tive of Edinburgh, migrated 
to Liverpool to establish his 
sons in business, and there they engaged in the 
West India trade in sugar, &c., so that in the pre- 
vious generation the family had been connected 
with tropical products, though not with the 
island of Ceylon. 
Charles Shand’s father and mother (Francis and 
Mary Sliand) were botli Scotcli : the former born in 
Edinbm’gh and the latter in x\berdeen. Mr. Charles 
Shand was born in Liverpool on the 20th Novr ml cr, 
1819. He was educated in private schools until lie 
was fifteen years of age, and was then apprenticed 
for seven years to one of the principal Brazil mercan- 
tile firms in Liverpool. Mr. Shand was well 
grounded in his school, and we remember his dial, 
lenging an English Public School lad of the pre- 
sent generation to compete with him as an old man, 
in his acquaintance with standard classics. Mr. 
Shand is one of the very few surviving free burgesses 
at Liverpool not disfranchised by the Reform Bill. 
“At the termination of my apprenticeship in 
January, 1842,” he says, “I took up my freedom as 
a burgess of Liverpool, as I was entitled to do, 
from having served free men for seven years. 
I could have claimed it by birth, as I was born 
‘free’ of the city. The firm I served wished me 
to remain with them ; but I decided, if my rela- 
tives would support me, to go out to Ceylon 
as a coffee planter, being induced thereto by the 
reports of my uncle, Sir William Reid, 
“ My father had died when I was very young, 
so I had to look to his brothers for assistance 
to carry out my wishes. This was granted, and 
I left for Ceylon at the beginning of February, 
1842, arriving by tlie overland route in the middle 
of April, a fact which exemplifies the striking 
advance Avhich has been made since the early 
years of Her Majesty’s reign in shortening the 
time occupied in journeying to the East, 
railways and ocean steamers being then in their 
infancy. I went through France by diligence to 
Marseilles, and there embarked in a steamer 
which touched at all the Italian ports to Lyra, 
one of the Greek Islands, and then on to Alexandria. 
After staying there a few days, I went to Cairo via 
the Mamondieh Canal and the Nile in a little 
steamer called, I think, the ‘Jack O’Lantern.’* I 
remained a week at Cairo, visiting the pyramids, 
and going to the top of the highest, and seeing 
all that was to be seen in the neighbourhood 
of Cairo. I was accompanied by a young 
* Just as we did nearly nineteen years later, in 
October, 1861, on our way out to Ceylon I — Ed, T. A, 
