The expedition of Spruce was successful, but was also attended with much difficulty and danger, of which there are vivid pictures in the interesting narratives by himself and by Cross, published in the Parliamentary Returns of 1863 and 1866.[1330]
The service entrusted, to Pritchett was also efficiently performed; and he succeeded in bringing to Southampton six cases containing plants of C. micrantha and C. nitida, besides a large supply of seeds.
Some important supplies of plants and seed for British India have likewise been obtained from the Dutch plantations in Java. Seeds of C. lancifolia, the tree affording the valuable bark of New Granada, were procured through Dr. Karsten.
Previously to the arrival in India of the first consignment of plants, careful inquiries were instituted from a meteorological and geological point of view, as to the localities most adapted for the cultivation. This resulted in the selection for the first trial of certain spots among the Neilgherry (or Nilgiri) Hills on the south-west coast of India and in the Madras Presidency. Of this district, the chief town is Ootocamund (or Utakamand), situated about 60 miles south of Mysore and the same distance from the Indian Ocean. Here the first plantation was established in a woody ravine, 7,000 feet above the sea-level, a spot pronounced by Mr. Markham to be exceedingly analogous, as respects vegetation and climate, to the Cinchona valleys of Carabaya. Other plantations were formed in the same neighbourhood, and so rapid was the propagation, that in September 1866, there were more than 1½ millions of Cinchona plants on the Neilgherry Hills alone.[1331] The species that grows best there is C. officinalis.
The number was stated to be in 1872, 2,639,285, not counting the trees of private planters. The largest are about 30 feet high, with trunks over 3 feet in girth. The area of the Government plantations on the Neilgherry Hills is 950 acres.[1332]
Plantations have also been made in the coffee-producing districts of Wynaad, and in Coorg, Travancore and Tinnevelly, in all instances, we believe, as private speculations.
Cinchona plantations have been established by the Government of India in the valleys of the Himalaya in British Sikkim,[1333] and some have been started in the same region by private enterprise. In the former there were on the 31st March 1870, more than 1½ millions of plants permanently placed, the species growing best being C. succirubra and C. Calisaya. The Cinchona plantation of Rungbi near Darjiling (British Sikkim) covered in 1872 2,000 acres. In the Kangra valley of the Western Himalaya, plantations have been commenced, as well as in the Bombay Presidency, and in British Burma.
Ceylon offers favourable spots for the cultivation of Cinchona, in the mountain region which occupies the centre of the island, as at Hakgalle, near Neuera-Ellia, 5,000 feet above the sea, where a plantation was formed by Government in 1861. The production of bark has been taken up with spirit by the coffee-planters of Ceylon.
The Government of India has acted with the greatest liberality in distributing plants and seeds of Cinchona, and in promoting the cultivation of the tree among the people of India; and it has freely granted supplies of seed to other countries.
The plantations of Java commenced by Hasskarl, increased under Junghuhn’s management to such an extent, that in December 1862 there were 1,360,000 seedlings and young trees, among which however the more valuable species, as C. Calisaya, C. lancifolia, C. micrantha and C. succirubra, were by far the least numerous, whereas C. Pahudiana, of which the utility was by no means well established, amounted to over a million. The disproportionate multiplication of this last was chiefly due to its quickly yielding an abundance of seeds, and to its rapid and vigorous growth. Another defect in the early Dutch System of cultivation arose from the notion that the Cinchona requires to be grown in the shade of other trees, and to a less successful plan of multiplying by cuttings and layers.