VI 
CINNAMON 
209 
In one of the largest gardens in Ceylon, at Marandun 
near Colombo, “ The surface is a pure white sand, under 
which is a deep stratum of rich mould. In some parts 
of the island, where this earth is deficient, the trees 
are barren and not worth cutting. In marshy places 
they thrive no better, but become decrepit, and the 
bark acquires a bitterness which destroys its sweet and 
aromatic qualities.” ^ 
An experienced Ceylon cinnamon planter writes in 
Ferguson’s All about Spices : — 
Cinnamon is not found growing wild to any great extent 
in the drier parts of the low country ; whatever may have led 
the Dutch to choose sandy plains for its cultivation, such lands 
are certainly not its natural habitat. It is most commonly 
found as a forest tree at from 1,000 to 2,500 ft. above sea-level, 
and in those angles of the mountain zone that face the 
monsoons. It is said to have been found growing at a height of 
5,000 ft. [Ferguson adds : — we have seen plants at 7,000 ft., the 
clove odour in the leaves pungent enough, but the bark having 
scarcely a tinge of true cinnamon]. As the plant has only been 
cultivated to any considerable extent in the sandy plains of 
the Western Province, sand has of course acquired the name 
of yielding the finest spice ; the only other land on which it is 
cultivated being the common cabook (laterite) gravel of the low 
country, on which it grows most rapidly, but produces a coarser 
article than on the sand. Whether a fine spice can be produced 
in a wetter and colder climate by cultivation remains to be 
tested by experiment. Till this is done we must continue to 
believe that the best cinnamon is grown on the poorest sand, 
where there is an average temperature of about 85° and an 
average rainfall of 1 in. for every degree. This is about the 
climate of the 50 miles of the coast of the Western Province ; 
farther south we do not find the sandy plains, and farther north 
we get into too dry a climate. 
With the rise of price, he says that the villagers 
planted much in low swampy ground, which produced 
an inferior quality with a great deal of waste wood. 
Another writer in the Journal of the Eastern 
Archipelago says, that besides sandy places, a mixture 
of sandy with red soil free from quartz, gravel, or rock 
^ Gardiner’s Ceylon. 
P 
