TAMIL COOLIE SETTING OUT TEA PLANTS
Peradeniya's visitors come from every land in the world, some traveling great distances to see the wonders of the garden. One has not to be
arboriculturist or botanist to appreciate the establishment; it is always entertaining, sometimes amusing, and appeals variously to the tastes of visitors. For example, the Mexican goes involuntarily to the aloe from which his beloved pulque is made, the Egyptian to the date-palm, the Connecticut man to the nutmeg grove, and the New Yorker to the tree under which handfuls of cloves may be scooped up without charge, whereas at home they are acquired one at a time at considerable expense.
Explore the highways and byways of Kandy keenly as one may, nothing is in evidence explaining its manifest prosperity—the place has no distinctive product or business. It is the seat of management, however, of the island's greatest industry—tea raising.
In Ceylon tea is "king." This being the fact, no visitor to the town where the Planters' Association has its administrative machinery can close his ears to tea talk. Elsewhere people talk over their tea-cups; in Kandy, they talk tea over every other kind of cup. Kandy's big hotel bristles with planters in overspreading sun hats, as do club and friendly bungalow verandas. Some are "down" for a day (and a night) from up-country estates, while others are "up" from smallish properties at levels below Kandy. Nearly all have to purchase supplies and draw a few sacks of rupees from the bank with which to pay off their coolies. But some have come to discuss market conditions and prospects with their agents. A few, not yet wholly emancipated from the social side of life in which they were reared, have journeyed to Kandy to rub shoulders for a few days with civilization.
The orbit of each and every one of these transplanted Britons is tea, and this in its primal form. They can have no concern with Steel common. Amalgamated copper or Erie 4's, and to them the jargon of stock exchanges would be as meaningless as Sanskrit platitudes. Their speculative medium is tea—tea in bulk, and pretty large bulk at that.
The daily cable from London summarizing the tea market interests each of these men as vitally as the tale of the ticker interests the American taking a flier in stocks. The story is told in two or three lines, and by a presentation of numerals appearing exceedingly unimportant to the sojourner whose operations in tea never exceeded the purchase of a pound package.
