PULPING. 
musty smell and white particles of mould floating about. 
The coffee was very apt to, and often did, get quite 
mouldy. Take up a handful and you would see it white 
in the middle grain. It was generally a good deal cut 
in the pulping, and these cut beans got quite rotten 
and full of dry mu«tj so that on pinching them they 
were empfy, or somewhait of the consistency of rotten 
cheese. If the weather continued long wet these mouldy 
beans tainted the sound ones, and it would be wort li 
while now, if any of the old Colombo agents’ books 
are in existence, to compare the general average 
outturn of bushels parchment to a clean cw t. of coffee 
now, with what it was then. A great deal of skin 
and cherry was left in the parchment, which, of course, 
was difficult to dry, and spoilt it, a§ the haK-dried 
skin got m6uldy, and tainted all the parchment with 
which it came in contact ; coolies were employed on 
the drying-ground, picking out ail this skin and un- 
pulped berries : rather expensive work. The; pulper 
itself w^as a very original affair ; the old rattletrap, 
which has done such good service in its day, and on 
some estates is still in use, was an improvement on the 
older one. I have got a very indistinct recollection 
of it, but, so far as memory carries me back, a wooden 
drum wheel was attached to the end of the cylinder, 
and there was another drum wheel in connection with 
the sieve. Betw^een these two drum wheels, connecting 
them, was a band or belt, so that the machine was 
worked by turning the cylinder; these belts were merely 
slips of bullock skin, sewed together tight and then 
passed over the drums. After w'orking a little they 
w'ould stretch and come off, and then the pulping was 
all stopped in order to tighten and sew the belt. 
This was done by means of slips of the skin like a shoe 
tie passed through holes in the belt made by an awL 
In a box close by the pulper were kept these slips 
of skin, awds, needles, &c., all ready for use when 
required. I used sometimes to think that the pulping 
coolies purposely slipped the belt when they got tired 
of turning the pulper, in order to have a rest, but, 
be this as it may, the sewing of the belt geneially 
occupied as much time, or more, as the pulping. It was 
always an excuse whenever the pulper stopped that 
the belt was slack and required a few, holes taken in. 
When a bullock died on the estate, the skin was care- 
fully preserved and stowed awa}^ in the store as a 
reserved contingency against the requirement of belts 
in crop tiiue. A couple of coolies stood in the re- 
ceiving cistern with a hand wire sieve or sieves, passing i. 
all the coffee through them, as it came out from the 
pulper, and the quantities of “tails” was something 
enormous. I have heard of some^**bffio were so en- . r'x*- 
