THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
March i, 1898.] 
643 
THE NEW ESTATES MAP AND DAYS 
OE OLD: 
KESIDENTIAL PEOPKIBTORS T". LIMITED 
COMPANIES— INPLATiON OF TEA SHAKES 
—TEA PROFITS— THE T.A. 
Your new Planting Districts Map is excellent, 
and supplies a very much felt want; but oh 
what visions it recalls of blasted hopes and de- 
parted friends, and oh what changes many for 
the better — and some for the worse ! 
Even the good old days of open house hospi- 
tality which plunged so many of us as youngsters 
into debt and whicli have naturally disappeared 
before increasing population. But liow pleasant 
it was to be able to ride up to any bungalow 
between Matale North and Morowakkorale and 
call for breakfast and for dinner and a bed and 
feel that you were a welcome guest even if you 
had an absent host ! 
But the most serious change which has come 
over Ceylon and which will be felt mucb if bad 
times arrive, is the rapid elimination of the resi- 
dential proprietary which socially and lina.icially 
made Ceylon what it is today. What prospec 
is there for youngsters going to Ceylon now ? 
If they have money they can play pitch and 
toss with tea shares which they can do quite 
as well in London : if they have not money 
they are destined to be hirelings for life and 
when the pinch of hard times comes to find 
— as has been found in some cases, already — that 
Directors have to do their duty to shareliolders 
first ; to their employes afterwards. 
The inflation in tea shares has been fol- 
lowed in London as in Colombo, by a very 
rapid and very natural depression. Many 
of the shares were far too high, not only be- 
cause they were and are good things in them- 
selves but because the abundance of cheap money 
and the difficulty in finding investment for it 
drove people to be contented with a rate of in- 
terest on tea shares, which \vas altogether in- 
adequate to the nature of the investment. Some 
good securities are as much too low now as 
they were too high before ; but they will soon 
adjust themselves and find their level at about 
seven per cent which is what investors should 
look to as a fair return for tea share property. 
Tlie rise in the rupee takes a little of the 
gilt off tea production, but not so much as it 
gets credit for and it cannot be held mainly 
responsible for the present tightness of the money 
market. The wage of the co(>ly is the chief 
if not the only thing, by which the tea planter 
gains by a cheap rupee ; and I believe a settled 
rupee about Is 4d would in the long run be 
advantageous. Taking the day’s wage at 33 
cents, the sterling equivalent with a one and 
four penny rupee is 5'28d ; surely a low enough 
wage, with a one,^ and two penny rupee 4'62d 
and if the rise in the sterling value of the day’s 
wage is accompanied by a fall in the silver price 
of tea lead, machinery and all other estate re- 
quisites which have to be paid for in gold — and 
which should certainly result — and by a possible 
fall in the price of rice, a rerluction in coast 
advances and a rise in the price of tea all of 
which theoretically should follow, the apparent 
loss to the planter will be counterbalanced.* 
The Tropical Agriculturist for tlie past year 
has been splendid, and the Photographs and 
* But J. MaoEwan says Indian and Ceylon Tea- 
planters lost £2,000,000 last year through the artifi- 
cial rupee I— Ed. T.A, 
79 
Biographical Sketches of our friends, — some gone 
and some still witli us, — lemarkably good, though 
the latter are in some cases veiled by the modesty 
of the autobiographer. ' J. L. S. 
London, Jan. 28. 
TEA IN SOUTH TRAEANCORE. 
Mr. Joseph Fraser has returned from his visit 
to South Travancore and is favourably impressed 
with the appearance of most of the tea he saw, 
while the rich jungle-reserves and soil are all that 
coukl be desired. He does not think that South 
Travancore t^as will ever attain a high position 
in prices ; but planters can niiike up a good deal 
for this by quantity and in low cost of production. 
In the case of one group an average outturn of close 
on 700 lb. an acre was realized including plucking 
from some three to four years old tea, and this was 
turned out at about 20 cents jjer lb. Tl. is must be 
considered very good. The great trouble is ibat of 
“labour.” Coolies are most plentiful at present; 
but when their own harvest comes in April and 
May, just as there is a “ rush of leaf,” they 
want to go borne. With coffee, the case was 
different, as the ripening of crop was in September 
and October. For young planters with some ca- 
pital and a good deal of pluck and perseverance, 
South Travancore should prove a good field for 
operations. 
THE RICH TRADE OF THE UPPER AMA- 
ZON RUBBER REGION. 
B)j Joseph Orton Kcrbey. 
Here is a rich country, almost equal in area to all 
of the United States east of the Rocky mountains. 
The natural products of India-rubber, balsams, nuts 
hides, etc., are of such value that there must always 
be a market for them. Amazonir, then, can never be 
a poor country ; the people can pay liberally for all 
that they need, and they buy a lot. They ca.n produce 
a great many commodities — sugar, cotton, coffee, cacao 
— but they prefer to concentrate all their labour on the 
more profitable occupation of gathering India-rubber 
The United States buys the greater share of their 
rubber, paying for it through English banks, the 
money being used to buy cheap English goods and 
cheaper German goods for this market. It may be 
news to some of your readers that a regular service 
now exists between Peru and Europe by which Iqui- 
tos obtains the benefit of a steamer direct every forty 
days, by either the Booth or the Red Cross line. 
The principal business house of Iquitos is that of 
Wesche & Co., a Gern.au firm who are conceded to 
handle more go. dsfor the Ucayali and Javary and the 
rivers behind than any other house in the Amazon 
country. They seem to have succeeded the Mourrail- 
les — the senior of whom has retired after the accumu- 
lation of a large fortune, though the house of Mour- 
raille & Hernandez still do an immense trade. The 
present manager for Wesche & Co., is Mr. Julio 
Weiss, a young German of energetic temperament, 
whose thorough-going methods disprove the assertion 
(hat all foreigners soon become lazy in this climate. 
The firm own four steamboats, which may be termed 
floating stores, since they ply the different rivers in 
Pern, exhibiting their goods on shelves at the various 
landings, taking orders, and receiving Caucho and 
other produce of the country in exchange. In answer 
to my inquiries, Mr. Weiss unhesitatingly told me 
that their stock of goods at present exceeds in value 
$1,000,000, gold. The extent of their business may 
be judged from the fact that they receive no less than 
5,000 packages of freight every month. Mr. Weiss 
is thoroughly German, and he proudly boasts that 
every one of these packages comes from the “ Father- 
land.” Yet he astounded me by frankly admitting 
