than 35,000 acres in 1893! The result is that in the present season (1893), in place of the million cwt. exported twenty-two years ago, the total shipments of coffee from Ceylon will not exceed one-fifteenth of that quantity, and although there is much encouragement in high prices to keep up and extend coffee cultivation, yet, we fear, there is no escape from the drawbacks which continue to beset the coffee planter in Ceylon. The leaf-fungus still hovers about, though in a much milder, and, as some think, a diseased form; but another enemy has since appeared in the shape of a coccus (called "green bug"), which has done much harm. Nevertheless, in certain favoured coffee districts, such as the Uva divisions, Maturatta, Agras division of Dimbula, and Bogawantalawa or Upper Dikoya, such coffee as is left still looks vigorous, and may continue to repay careful cultivation, more especially since prices have so much improved, and a scarcity of the product is anticipated. All this refers to the cultivation of the Arabian species of coffee (Coffee Arabica); the industry in the Liberian variety came after, and is dealt with under "New Products." The mitigations of the disaster-the silver lining to the dark cloud which came over the prospects of the majority of Ceylon coffee planters-is dealt with in the next chapter. At an early stage in the history of coffee leaf disease in Ceylon, one cause, and that perhaps the chief, of the visitation had become apparent in the limitation of cultivation to one plant, and one only, over hundreds of square miles of country which had previously been covered with the most varied vegetation. Nature had revenged herself, just as she had done on Ireland when potatoes threatened to become the universal crop, as well as on extensive wheat fields elsewhere, and on the French vineyards. The * See in Appendix No. II., Paper read by Mr. J. Ferguson before the London Chamber of Commerce, on June 25th, 1892. hemileia vastatrix was described by Dr. Thwaites as peculiar to a jungle plant, and finding coffee leaves a suitable food in 1869 it multiplied and spread indefinitely. It could not be said that the fungus thus burst out in Ceylon because of coffee being worn out or badly cultivated, for it first appeared in a young district upon vigorous coffee, and it afterwards attacked old and young, vigorous and weak trees, with absolute impartiality. The true remedy, then, for the loss occasioned by this pest-apart from the wisdom of the old adage not to have all one's eggs in one basket-lay in the introduction of New Products. CHAPTER VII. NEW PRODUCTS. (See Appendix, Nos. II. and III.) Tea-Cinchona-Cacao-Indiarubber-Cardamoms-Liberian MEA. cultivation was said to be tried in Ceylon in the T time of the Dutch, but there is no reliable evidence of this tradition, and Dr. Trimen does not believe it; * for although there is a wild plant (Cassia auriculata), called the Matara tea plant, from which the Sinhalese in the south of the island are accustomed to make an infusion, yet nothing was done with the true tea plant till long after coffee was established. Between 1839 and 1842, under the auspices of Governor Stewart-Mackenzie and others, experiments were made with the Assam tea plant at Peradeniya and Nuwara Eliya, but without permanent results. A little later, the Messrs. Worms (cousins of the Rothschilds, who did an immense deal in developing Ceylon) introduced the China plant, and, planting up * Dr. Trimen is kind enough to report to me (September 1892) as follows:-"Bennet, in his 'Ceylon and its Capabilities,' gives a figure, a good one, of the real tea plant which, he says, was collected near Batticaloa (I think in 1826), but from the text he clearly confused it with our Matara tea, the leaves of the 'Ranawara' (Cassia auriculata). Still I think true tea may have been grown in some gardens in Ceylon, as it was certainly in the Botanic Gardens at Kalutara before 1824, the date of Morris's Catalogue. Assam tea was sent from Calcutta as early as 1839, and planted at Nuwara Eliya." a field on the Ramboda Pass, proved that tea would grow well in the island. Mr. Llewellyn about the same time introduced the Assam plant again into Dolosbagie district, but no commercial result came from these ventures. Attention was, however, frequently called to this product, and in 1867 a Ceylon planter was commissioned to report on the tea-planting industry in India. In that same year the attention of planters was also first turned to the cinchona plant, which had been introduced six years earlier to India and Ceylon by Mr. Clements Markham. The Director of the Botanic Garden, Dr. Thwaites, however, found great difficulty in getting any planter to care about cultivating a "medicine plant," and when the great rise in prices for coffee came, all thought of tea and cinchona was cast to the winds, and the one old profitable product, which everybody-planters and coolies alikeunderstood, was alone planted. Very early in his administration, Sir William Gregory, to his special credit be it said, saw the necessity for new products, and he used all his personal and official influence to secure their development, introducing a new feature into the Governor's annual speech to the Legislative Council in special notices of the progress of tea, cinchona, cacao, Liberian coffee, and rubber cultivation. The influence of the principal journal in the colony (the Ceylon Observer) was earnestly cast into the same scale, and practical information to aid the planter of new products was collected for it from all quarters, more especially from the tropical belt of the earth's surface.* Cinchona. When Governor Gregory arrived in 1872 only 500 acres of cinchona had been planted, but before he left in 1877 not only had these increased to 6000 acres, but the planters had begun thoroughly to appreciate the value of the new product, its suitableness for the hill-country and climate of Ceylon, and the profits to be made from judicious cultivation. The great rush, however, took place on the failure of coffee in 1879 and the next three years, so that by 1883 the area covered by this plant could not be less than 60,000 acres. The enormous bark exports which followed from Ceylon so lowered the price (involving the great blessing of cheap quinine) that it became no longer profitable to cut bark in the native South American cinchona groves, or to plant further in Ceylon, India, or Java. Attention, therefore, began in 1884 to be diverted from cinchona; nevertheless the exports from the existing area continued high, and the area still under cinchona, making allowance for what was * In June 1881 the monthly periodical, The Tropical Agriculturist, was started by the author from the Observer Press for the special purpose of meeting the requirements of planters. It circulates all round the tropical belt of the world, and has received high encomiums in Britain, United States, West Indies, South America, and Australia. |