CAPTAINS, COLONELS, AND GENEEALS. 
trade. Almost every other proprietor you met was 
styled “Captain/’ Take the Kamboda district m 
1845. With the exception of the estate above the 
bridge, they were all Captains from Kondegala down 
to well into Pussellawa, and even there also the 
Captain flourished. Not only this, but a Colonel 
would be found here and there, and even a General. 
No wonder that Kamboda was called “a nobby 
district,” and that resident propietors were considered 
“quite the thing,” but although they were considered 
this in the social scale, it did not seem to make 
planting pay. It was just the old story, which is so 
mcomprehensible to many, that a proprietor cannot 
manage his own property so well as a paid manager. 
We can trace the after life of most of these Captains, 
and also bow and where some of them died, with 
one exception, and this was in the ca-e of the resi* 
dent proprietor of Monaragala, above the Eothschild 
Estate, in Pussellawa^ who was a Capiain Jacob, and 
was resident on his estate about the years 1845-46. 
Can any one tell what became of him, or how the 
property went out of his possession 
They always had a superintendent of some sort to do 
all the common dirty work. Catch them issuing rice, Plea- 
suring coffee, or mustering the coolies. Not that they were 
lazy in the mornings : quite the reverse. They would 
frequently be up long before the superintendent, even 
before daylight, and startle the boy with shouts 
for coffee, for they were off, either with their own 
dogs, or with a neighbour who kept a pack, away 
up into the jungles to hunt for elk, or down the 
chenas towards the Kotmale-ganga, in search of red 
deer. If, as was generally the case, good sport was 
obtained, the sportsman would he back about noon, 
for bi-eakfast, and, having had quite enough hard 
work for the day, he would rest in the house till 
the cool of the evening, then a canter along the high 
road to exercise the horse, and have a glass of sherry 
and fifteen minutes’ gossip with some neighbouring 
planter, wliich would give him an appetite for dinner. As 
it Wrt.s always a case of early rising, so it was like- 
wise early to bed. The dinner hour would be seven, 
and under ordinary circumstances to bed at nine ; 
ten would be considered unusually late. But the 
proprietor — when he had nothing better to do ! — would 
sometimes take the whim into his head to work very 
hard on the estate and have a thoiough overlook 
and examination into everything. He was begiiming 
^ If our recollection serves us, he was Mr, Pogson*8 
►rcdecessor In the Ofiice of Governmen*^ x^stronocaeri 
dadras, dying there of cholera. — E d, 
