[47] It is satisfactory to learn that caste feelings and regulations have a favourable influence with natives, even when they go to a foreign country; and it is equally satisfactory to quote the evidence of a gentleman who laughs at caste as an absurd custom. Mr. W. Sabonadière, in his work of "The Coffee Planter in Ceylon" writes as follows: "The coolies who resort to Ceylon are of various castes. Those mostly preferred by planters are the low castes, such as Pallans, shanars, and Pariahs, as being more accustomed to and fit for hard work; but, as a class, they are more given to drink, spend their money more freely, and are more quarrelsome than the higher classes, whom their caste forbids to drink arrack or spirits, and who are more cleanly in their habits, better behaved (as fearing to lose caste), who have land of their own on the coast, and are more interested in working regularly and gaining their wages to take away with them."
[A] MS. account of Baptist Mission.
CHAPTER IX.
COFFEE PLANTING IN COORG.
The British Province of Coorg consists of a mountainous and jungly tract of country with elevations of from about 2,700 to 3,809 feet. The last is the elevation of the capital, Mercara, the tableland of which, for a stretch of about 26 miles, averages about 3,500 feet. This little province lies, as the reader will see by a glance at the map, on the south-west border of Mysore, with which, since its annexation, it has always been connected, and the Resident of Mysore invariably holds the post of Commissioner of Coorg. The population of Coorg is just over 170,000, and its area is 1,583 square miles, or about one-fourth of the size of Yorkshire. But, though small in extent and population, its Rajah and people played an important part as our allies in the war with Tippoo, and a full account of the facts is given in the history of Coorg which has been published in the "Mysore and Coorg Gazetteer." The history of the country, however, which has been gathered up by various European writers, is by no means of an alluring character, and indeed, after the beginning of this century, a more disgusting record of cruelty and oppression it would be difficult to find in the annals of any country. But three things at least the record most distinctly proves. The first is (though this hardly requires any additional proof) that man, though capable of being the best, is also capable of being by far the worst of animals; the second is that, Coorg being a sample of most of India in the times preceding ours, the Hindoos were perfectly right in leaving few annals behind them; and the third is that the blessings of British rule far exceed anything that anyone could imagine who had not read something of the condition of things in India before we took possession of it, for we have not only conferred on the people immeasurable positive benefits, but relieved them from the barbarous rule of cruel oppressors. In the case of Coorg there can be no doubt that we allowed the Rajahs of that country to carry on their work of cruelty and oppression towards their subjects for much too long a period of time, and our failure to act can only be partially excused by the fact that we were, in connection with the war with Tippoo, under great obligation to the ancestor of the Rajah we deposed. However, his vile oppression and cruel murders, which exceed anything the reader could believe to be possible, could no longer be tolerated, and in 1834 he was deposed, and his country absorbed into the British Dominions. Since that date the general welfare of the country was of course insured, and much of it is now a thriving coffee field which, as I shall afterwards show, has been of the greatest benefit to Mysore, and the adjacent British territory. Of the history and cultivation of coffee in Coorg, and my visits to the province, I now propose to give some account.
After the planting season of 1857 I went with a brother planter for a change of air to Mangalore, and from thence we went to Cannanore—a military station about 200 miles further down the coast—and, after a short stay there, rode up the Ghauts into Coorg, where we found the planters busy clearing the forest. Three years before our arrival Mr. Fowler had opened the Mercara Estate, and in 1855 Mr. H. Mann, and Mr. Donald Stewart had begun work on the Sumpaji Ghaut, while Dr. Maxwell opened up the Periambadi Ghaut Estates in 1856, and in 1857 Mr. Kaundinya founded a plantation in the Bamboo district which lies on the eastern side of Coorg. The first European plantation was, as we have seen, started in 1854, but for many years previously coffee cultivation had been carried on by natives in the Nalknaad District, though it seems to be quite uncertain as to when or how it was first introduced, or where the first seeds were obtained.
At first all seemed to be going well with coffee in Coorg, and for a good many years the fatal mistake of the planters in clearing down the whole forest, and leaving no shade over the coffee, was not decisively apparent, and from the lands that were thus cleared down on the above-mentioned Ghauts, which lie on the western side of the province, from 700 to 1,000 tons were picked annually when the coffee was at its best. But what in "the seventies" represented about £100,000 of valuable property, gradually became more and more unprofitable, till at last the estates were abandoned, and the land has now become covered with masses of Lentana (a crawling, climbing, thorny plant which has become a perfect plague in Coorg), amidst which may occasionally be seen the white walls of unroofed bungalows, and dismantled pulping houses, which testify to the melancholy ending of the work of the planters whom I found so busily engaged when, in 1857, I first entered Coorg.
Some attributed the failure to the Bug, some to the Borer, and to leaf disease, while others blamed the heaviness of the tropical rains, which washed away the valuable surface soil, the flight of which towards the western sea was much expedited by weeding with the mamoty (a digging hoe), which loosened the soil, and so prepared the way for its more rapid disappearance. And these causes no doubt hastened the end, but they were mainly results arising from one great cause—the neglect to supply shade for the coffee, and this again arose from the circumstance that most of the pioneer planters came from Ceylon where the coffee is planted in the open, and where shade is not required. And this failure, owing to the neglect of shade, had a most unfortunate effect, for it was owing to this that Coorg naturally acquired such a doubtful coffee reputation in the eyes of the uninformed public—a reputation which, as I shall afterwards show, arose not from any fault of the country as a coffee field, but solely from the fatal mistake of attempting to plant without providing shade for the coffee. And this mistake the planters, as we shall see, had great difficulty in shaking off, for when they saw the inevitable end approaching, and hastened to take up land in the eastern part of Coorg in what is known as the Bamboo district (because the jungle lands there consist very largely of forest trees interspersed with clumps of bamboos), they persisted in carrying their fatal Ceylon system with them, and Mr. Donald Stewart, called the Coffee King in Mincing Lane, who was a warm supporter of planting in the open, even issued, it is said, an order to his managers saying that if he found a single forest tree standing (the coffee around even a single tree would have proved him to be wrong) dismissal would follow. But nature proved to be too strong for Mr. Stewart and those who followed his example, and whole estates in the Bamboo district were practically exterminated by the Borer insect. At last the planters, warned by a long and bitter experience, gave way all along the line, and began to imitate the shade planters of Mysore, and shade is now as universal in Coorg as in Mysore, and under its protection the coffee in both countries thrives equally well. I may mention here that the Rev. G. Richter, who is now the second oldest resident in Coorg, took an active part in opening up the Bamboo district, and was for some time a partner in one of the estates. He has shown great zeal in endeavouring to introduce new products, such as tea, cocoa, ceara rubber, and vanilla. His manual of Coorg, I may add, is most interesting and exhaustive.[[48]]
Besides the first mentioned, and now abandoned coffee district, and the Bamboo district, there is the important district of North Coorg, which, though it has a smaller number of estates, certainly contains coffee that, so far as I am able to judge, it would be impossible to surpass.