June r, 1S98.] THE TROPICAL 
W 9.3 & Director of the Bank of England. Sir John 
Eae Eei(f, Bart., was one also. He had been Governor 
in 1839. John Uockerill had been on the same board. 
The senior of W. E. Eobertson & Co., who failed 
in the corn trade, was ttovernor of the Bank when 
he failed ; one nominated to fill a vacancy failed 
before the formalities of electing him conU be carried 
throimh. No position in the City seemed then to 
testify to any solvency. A spirit of the very wildest 
specnlation bad become general iu the world 
tills was the reaction. The speculative impulse which 
was first manifested at home chiefly in dealings in 
Hallway stocks, had spread among all ranks and classes 
and into all trades. The result was collapse and 
panic. The purely mercantile troubles were aggravated 
intensely by crushing commitments for railway calls 
which had to be met and paid up whatever the 
state of the mmey market. These calls amounted 
to 22 millions in one half year and 3 or -1 millions 
during one single month in these bad times. The 
flank Act had to be suspended. The minimum Hank 
Bate W'as 3 per cent, with very little to be had at that 
rate even on good security, and a rate equal to 13 per- 
cent. per annum was paid for the discount of TTO,onO 
City’ Bankers' acceptances within seven days oi 
nraturity. 
The steady and prudent, as now, were in the 
majority fioth among individuals and fliins; but for 
the while they seemed lost siglit of, first iu the 
wild davs of s(eoulation, and then in the turmorl 
of liquidation and failirres that followed. When the 
Btorrrrhad passed over and the amrosphere had cleared, 
these stood out who had weathered it and preserved 
the good name of the British Merchant for meeting 
the liabilities he undertakes lo meet, and these were 
still the many. 
The present times are by no means free from the 
spirit of speculation, aud it is not amiss occasionally 
to cast a glance on the consequences to an earlier 
generation. Ceylon, not having escaped the rnlection 
of speculation, did not escape the wide-spreaa troubles 
that followed, as any may read in Ferguson’s “Ceylon 
Handbook and Directory,’’ aud as shown rn the 
failures of the Bank of i eylon, Hudson, Chandler 
& Co. and others. In the “ Handbook,” confined to 
Ceylon affairs, there is naturally inuch said about 
the results of the specnlatious in Coffee in this Island 
with quotations from Sir Emerson Teunent, perhaps 
rather as if it were a thing of itself and not part of 
a world-wide troirble ; but as we have seen the spirit 
of speculation of those days was not in any way 
or degree confined to Ceylon, nor was the epidemic 
more virulent here than elsewhere. The rush into 
Coffee here was only a sign of the times and of what 
was going on elsewhere. There was nothing in com- 
mon between the failure of the Bank o£^ Ceylon, and 
the great house of Prime, Ward & Co., Baring’s cor- 
respondents in New York, except that both were 
results of the mad speculation that had raged , 
or between Hudson, Chandler & Co., Colombo, and 
the corn-trade house of the Governor Eobertson of 
the Bank of England. The wild rush into Ceylon 
Coffee by military, civilians, cleigy and East Indian 
officers, as described by Tenneni. was another fea- 
ture of the same classes in Europe more wildly 
rushing into railway shaies and saddling themselves 
with liabilities for 'calls. The fever ot speculation 
was an epidemic which had seized the many at home as 
hero in the Ea.st and raged in America and else- 
where as vio.c i.tly. Now se\ere as the reaction was 
in Ceylon, iheie vas not the extreme distress of 
some places, probably because there had net been 
the same inflation— not the disti ess for instance that 
there was in Mauritius, when Eeid, Irving s lailure 
was announced in December, 18-17. To that Colony 
might have been app.ied the description of Liver- 
pool at this time on the failure of the Royal Bank 
of Liverpool— “it reeh d and staggered like a drunken 
man.” Still in Colombo things were bad enough and 
money tenibly scarce. , , „ 
The Lindsay Eajawellas then had passed under the 
very free or extravagant management of Mr. David Baird 
Lindsay, an able determined energetic young son and ex- 
AGRICULTURIST. 8 m 
editor of the Colonel, christened after his father’s com- 
panion in arms. Sir David Baird, the hero of Seringa- 
patam, at one time the rival of Sir Arthur Wellesley.* 
The estates needed funds that were not to be found 
in Colombo, and Mr. Lindsay went home iu order 
to obtain the needful, first making that arrange- 
ment with the Oiiental Bank that was afterwards 
so profitable to the lawyers in the Island and in 
Westminster. We have no need to enter on the 
particulars of that long dispute, except to say time 
pressed, the arrangemeut was made in a hurry, at 
a period of excitement, and therefore probably ih- 
considered. Each paity doubtless acted hona ,p'de, 
but the result was that when Mr. Lindsay returned 
he found the estates i'l the hands of the Bank, 
that the Courts of Law iu the Islaudi said they 
were rightly iu the Bank’s hands, and the Privy 
Council 23r'd Inne, 18li0, said they were wrongly in ' 
tho^e hands, aud ordered them to be restored to 
the Lindsays aud Haddens with back profits and 
interest i'28,525. 
After this the history of the Rvjawellas is more 
or less that of most other estates. For family reasons 
and for ooiivenieuce in working they were made iuto 
a Company in 1863, aud valued by Mr. Simon Keir, of 
Keir, Dundas A Co., at .f4o,00U. They yielded tail- 
Coffee crops for awhile. They had yielded 6,40'J cvvts. 
in 18.57-58, and 6,82‘2 in 1859 6U ; and an average of 
5,100 cwta. in the 7 years 1853 to 1860. In 1862 63 
they gave 5,635 cwts,, and in “the seventies” aver- 
aged under 1,900 cwts. Succumbing to leaf disease they 
never saw 1,900 cwts. afterwards, and Eajawellas 
coffee days are now almost represented only by a 
fice tree stem in the rooms of the Ceylon Associa- 
tion in London, taken hoiiie by the late Peter Moir 
as a memento. J 
Prices of the Coffee crops varied from a nett of 
47s. 6d. in 1867-68 to a nett of luOs. 3d. inl873-74. 
Tea was planted by order of Mr. D. B. Lindsay 
(who already had a sort of speaking acquaintance 
with it in India), iu the “sixties,” with seed he 
obtained about 1864 from C.ilcutta ; and a chest as 
sample was despatched home at the end of 1871- to 
be reported on. It was condemned unsparingly but 
deservedly by a firm of highest rank as Tea Brokers. 
We give the Report as below: — 
dleport on two boxes Tea ex. “ Oxfordshire ” 
19th April, lST-2. 
“ Though one is called black and the other green, 
both have the characteristics of the first, and that 
of the most ordinary description, and as a marketable 
commodity they are worthless. The tea called green 
shows signs of some attempt at manufacture as there 
is a considerable portion of fair twisted black leaves 
iiiit. The tea called black is chiefly open lialt curled 
leaf, and how any one could coiisiiler that such 
would pass as “tea” surprises us. However, look- 
ing at the future of the garden, the inspection of 
the leaf after infusion indicates that considerable 
imorovement could be made in both the ‘withering’ 
and ‘fermenting’ processes connected with the manu- 
facture. But we should hesitate to give an cniiiion 
as to whether the tea can ever he brought up 
to a high standard as the color of the water is so 
pale aud the flavour so remarkably thin aud pooi. 
* When Sir David Buird’s mother in S"o!l:and heard 
that her son W'S prisouei, ch lined to anotlu i iiv n by 
Tippoo S.ihib 111 Seriiigapatam, her l•h.u■aci . i n-i 
maik was; “ God help the man liiat is chained to ocr 
Davie,” — a rough-tempered customer evidently, hut a 
splendid soldier aud gener.d as he afterward sliowtd, 
—Ed. T.A. 
t The Kandy District Court gave against the 
Bank ; the Supreme Court for it. The Privy Council’s 
julguient was a triumph for Mr. Tom Power, D..J. 
—Ed. T a. 
j As we drove through Dumbara and Teldeuiya 
in 1865, Mr. Edward Mortimer, still alive, shouted ; 
“ Are you not coining to see 15 cwt. Coffee an acre 
on Rajiwella ■?’— E d. 7’..1. ,j 
