Sos . THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [June i, 1898. 
Still, a proper process of mannfacture would make 
a very great alteration in this as well as in the 
appearance of the leaf.” 
The Tea was plucked from trees over 6 ft. high. 
They had never been pruned. It naturally had been 
ino.^t crudely cmed; the ciuer h-ui no rx; •" irr"e, 
no bookh. no nuu-liinerv to lielp liiiii. IL- iHiigiia 
now over his 8,tleinpfcs at witlieiing the ieat by put- 
ting it into the firing pan, taking it out and roll- 
ing it, and so on, until he ccnsideri d the tea was made. 
Ho was not very surprised to hear that it was loo rasjiiug 
for the English, but might possibly suit Holland or 
Russia ; He could not easily have even a talk with any 
who had experience. He did his best from a description 
of the necessary operations written by Mr. Linasay ; 
but the great fault in the Tea s.ample was its 
emanating from a jdace unrecognised as a Tea-pro- 
ducing country ; for no set of men are more 
cmservative than those in Mincing Lane; anything 
new stiffens their hacks and seta their countenances, 
as was shown when Cinchona bark was first sent 
to them from Ceylon. The drug brokers with one 
or two exceptions, scorned the suggestion of it being 
something worthy of their attention. Cinchona had 
never come from Ceylon, but from South Africa — 
was not that enough ? The consequence of this atti- 
tude was that the sale of much of the Ceylon pro- 
duct, probably the bulk of it, went into the hands 
of the Coffee Brokers who at the beginning knew 
no more about it as a marketable article than the 
planters who grew it. 
Be this as it may, the chilling reception given in 
Mincing Lane to the first attempts at Tea on the 
Eajawellas, the difficulties in making the Tea with 
no one on the estate or easily procurable who knew 
the process, and the absence of a principal, caused the 
attempt to be abandoned. It was not for many 
years that it was renewed. There are now laO acres 
of promising Tea, and the area will no doubt be 
extended even with present low prices. We learn 
from the present Superintendent, Mr. C. W. 
Sinclair, that the 34 years old tea on Raja- 
wella is represented by a few scattered miserable 
looking shrubs : it has always been in dense shade, 
never cultivated, and stands in poor washed out 
gravel thinly overlying limestone.” 
Cacao was first seriously planted on the Rajawellas 
in 1877-78, the proprietors putting out that season 
(30,000 plants, calculated as l.'SO acres, in alarm at the 
havoc in the Coffee by leaf disease, and encouraged at 
the growth of some 20,000 Cacao plants with which 
they had then already experimented. They calcu- 
lated on the plants bearing at about 4 years old, 
and on their being in full bearing at 8 or 9 years, 
and producing then 9 to 10 cwt. per acre. After 1877 
the area under Cacao cultivation xvas steadily extended. 
In March, 1881, the estates weie considered by a 
competent valuer as then worth i2S,(iU0, and he 
estimated they would be worth £31,000 by March, 
1882, and above R5UO,(j0O by 1887 for Cacao alone, 
on an 8 years’ purchase ; but basing his calculations 
on 600 acres yielding by that time cwts. per acre 
worth R35 per cwt. 
In connection with our glance at days gone by, 
we may perhaps relate an incident that happened to 
Mr. Alexander Hadden, whom we have already men- 
tioned, when he came down from Bombay to look 
after his Ccffee venture in 1846, and see his many 
connections and iriends in ihe Islanu ; for it was 
an experience that would not be likely to befall an 
everyday visitor now, coming to the Island to view his 
property. He was in the good ship (he ‘'Recovery” 
which carried a number of convicts. (Those who 
mark coincidences may note it was his liiud vojage 
to and fiom Ceylon.) When eff Goa at 3 p.m. the 
3rd Eeb. “Gang No. 3” maue a lusli up the 
hatchway, disanneu ifie scnti-ies, got on deck, ai d, 
in number 20 or 30, made for the Captain, who 
was unarmed, hut hearing the conirnotiou and not 
realising what it was, naturally went forward to see 
what it was all about. Mr. Hadden, who was with 
him, more instantly taking in the situation, ran off 
to the Captain's cabin, picked up two double-barrelled 
pistols with necessary ammunition, and firing at the 
felons as he returned, was quickly back at the Cap- 
taiir's side, slipping one of tne pistols inm his hand 
.UmI i. ln . iifg Ills own (for tliene w. re d.rvs hefoi'e 
Crlcnrl < . lid >evcl.’i-r.-). TliefiiSi riioi i; • ic°d 
the 's' advance, they fiesic.ilt-. i.nel as ■ , 'S 
Tie Captiiiii had fired the revolt w.is piactica.iv o.er 
He. oire J' hirstou, a well-know’u ('apt in u ; is 
day, managed rather well ; for as soon as he saw 
the convicts orr the deck he.sitate, retreat and show 
there was no fight in them, he confined himself 
to shots at any fresh heads that came irp the hatch- 
way as reinforcements, making them promptly dis- 
appear. Meanwhile, three or four muskets were got 
together and fired also, and the scourings of Bom- 
bay and upcountry jails driven below. The whole 
affair lasted only three or four minutes. When it 
was over a Sepoy of the guard was found rather 
badly wounded in the head by a carpenter’s large 
hammer which the ruffians had somehow managed 
to lay hold of and apply with effect. One of the 
convicts was killed by a musket ball ; and five were 
wounded — four by pistol shots. After this brush 
the Captain had twenty well flogged, three dozen 
each, well laid on, and the stream cable put through 
the whole of their irons with the two ends brought 
on deck, except when the prisoners, two or three 
shackled together, w’ere brought up for a wash. 
So they had no other chance of taking the ‘‘Recovery’s 
before she arrived in Colombo on the evening of 
I6th February, when Mr. Hadden left her, and was 
immediately informed that the Rajawellas were to 
be offered for public sale on 21st with the low limit 
on them of ,£25,000. It seemed to him a very low 
limit, when only two years before the places had been 
all but sold for £70,000; but low as it was, it was 
about all that was then attainable. 
These figures certainly show great fluctuations : — 
What cost 
1839 ‘ 
and to open 
£8 000 
was valued 
1844 
70,000 
and ,, 
And the part 
that cost 
1846 
25,170 
1846 
£14,260 
with additions 
say 
£ 1,740 = 
£16,000 
was valued 
1863 
£45,000 
and ,, 
1881 
at £25,000 or 
£31,000 
and t' en expect- 
ed to be worth 1888 
£50,000 
There were, however, very special circumstances 
connected with all these fluctuations. If the £70,000 
of 1844 was an ‘‘ inflated value” it was at all events 
based on what the property had yielded, and within 
20 years it was far exceeded if Mr. Simon Keir 
can he at all trusted. If the fall in 1846 to £25,000 
was a reaction from the previous inflation, it was 
still well above 300 per cent advance ou what the 
estate had cost the partnei.ship, and what a magni- 
ficent income had been drawn meanwhile ! More- 
over, the fall might well have betii expected to bo 
far more severe, for it was aggratated by many very 
adverse circumstances, including the severest mone- 
tary pressure and the threat of “ Free Trade,” i.e., 
the abolition of those preferential duties that had 
contributed to the large profits. All letters from 
planters of this date are full of alarm at the cer- 
tain ruin that awaited plantations under free trade. 
It was a very real terror to planters and intending 
investors. Free trade, however, became an accom- 
plished fact, and the estates under it recovered in 
value nearly .300 per cent as Coffee property, and even 
when coffee, was in extremis, the estates were 
valued at 100 per cent above the price the Colonel 
gave for them on the death of his partner. 
Vt hat strikes the observer in all this, is the speedy re- 
covery even from extreme depression in Cejlon, if these 
Rajawellas are to he accepted at all as a type. 
If so the fair lesson seems to be that if you have 
Ceylon property you ihould stick to it. However 
dark the day, you may reasonably hope for brighter 
