The harvest takes place in October, when the grass is very high and sharp, sorely cutting the hands, feet, and faces of the people. It is also covered with innumerable large greedy leeches. The cultivators pick the cardamom capsules from the branches, and convey them to a temporary hut, where the women fill the bags with cardamoms, and carry them home, sometimes to distances of ten or twelve miles. Some families will gather 20 to 30 maunds annually, worth from 600 to 1000 Rs.[475]
This method of cardamom cultivation must be considered injurious to the conservancy of fine timber in the forests, but, on the other hand, the crops themselves are very valuable, and bring in a considerable revenue. But there is another kind of cultivation carried on in these vast forests on the western slopes of the ghauts, which is far more prejudicial to the production of valuable timber-trees. This is called kumari, and punam in Malabar. It has been altogether prohibited in Coorg and Mysore, while in Canara it is not now allowed within nine miles of the sea, or three of any navigable river, or in any of the Government forests without previous permission. But in Malabar, where all the forests are private property, the Government is unable to interfere in the matter, and kumari is quite unrestricted.
Kumari is cultivation carried on in forest-clearings. A space is cleared on a hill-slope at the end of the year; the wood is left to dry until March or April, and then burnt. The seed, generally raggee (Eleusine coracana), is sown in the ashes on the fall of the first rain, the ground not being touched with any implement, but merely weeded and fenced. The produce is reaped at the end of the year, and is said to be worth double that which could be procured under ordinary modes of cultivation. A small crop is taken in the second, and perhaps in the third year, and the spot is then deserted and allowed to grow up with jungle. The same spot is cultivated again after 10 or 12 years in Malabar, but in North Canara the wild hill tribes generally clear patches in the virgin forest. Dr. Cleghorn reports that kumari renders the land unfit for coffee-cultivation, destroys valuable timber, and makes the locality unhealthy, dense underwood being substituted in the abandoned clearings for tall trees under which the air circulated freely.[476] The Kurumbers and Irulas, wild tribes of the Neilgherries, also raise small crops by burning patches of jungle and scattering seeds over the ashes. This system, which sounds so wasteful and is so injurious to the yield of timber in the forests, is exceedingly profitable to the cultivator, who has no expenses beyond the payment of land-tax, which in these wild unfrequented spots is often evaded. A common profit is 18 to 28 Rs. an acre.
After leaving Ooticully we still had to pass through fifteen miles of jungle, before reaching the open cultivated country in northern Malabar. In driving down the ghaut the views, through occasional openings, of the wide expanses of forest were very grand. Tall trunks of trees towered up to a great height in search of light and air, palms and bamboos waved gracefully over the road, and the range of Coorg mountains filled up the background. Most of the valuable timber has been long since felled in these forests, excepting in the very inaccessible parts. The poon-trees (Calophyllum angustifolium),[477] which are chiefly found in Coorg, and yield most valuable spars for masts, have become exceedingly scarce. The young trees are now vigilantly preserved. Black-wood (Dalbergia latifolia) is also getting scarce, though I saw a good deal of it in some of the Coorg jungles; and teak-trees of any size have almost entirely disappeared, excepting in the forests of North Canara.
At a distance of twenty miles from the sea the cultivated country commences in this part of Malabar, and the road on each side is lined with pepper-fields, with occasional groves of plantains and clumps of cocoa and betel-nut palms. The land undulates in a succession of hills and dales, with rice cultivation in some of the hollows. Here the pepper is regularly grown in large fields, and not in gardens as at Calicut. In the first place trees are planted in rows, usually such as have rough or prickly bark—the jack, the mango, or the cashew-nut. In the country we were passing through the tree used was an Erythrina, with the bark of trunk and branches thickly covered with thorns. Until the trees have grown to the proper size the land is often used for raising plantains. When the trees have attained a height of 15 or 20 feet, the pepper is planted at their bases, and soon thickly covers the stem and festoons over the branches. The pepper-cuttings or suckers are put down by the commencement of the rains in June, and in five years the vine begins to bear. Each vine bears 500 to 700 bunches, which yield about 8 or 10 seers when dried. During its growth it is necessary to remove all suckers, and the vine is pruned, thinned, and kept clear of weeds. The vine bears for thirty years, but every ten years the old stem is cut down and layers are trained. It is an exceedingly pretty cultivation, and, if it was not for the crests of straggling branches which crown the vine-covered trunks, it would not be unlike the hop-fields of Kent.
The houses on the road were built of laterite, large and comfortable like those at Calicut. We saw the people sitting before their doors, busy with their heaps of pepper. When the berries have been gathered they are dried in the sun on mats, and turn from red to black. The white pepper is from the same plant, the fruit being freed from the outer skin by macerating the ripe berries in water. Before reaching Cannanore we passed over three or four miles of elevated rocky land, without cultivation, and arrived in the cantonment late at night.
In enumerating the localities where it is likely that chinchona-plants will thrive, the mountainous country in Mysore, north of Coorg, including Nuggur and the Baba-Bodeen hills, must not be forgotten. Nuggur consists of rounded hills, from 4000 to 5000 feet above the sea, with peaks rising as high as 6000; and the adjoining Baba-Bodeen hills attain a height of 5700 feet. The climate is exceedingly moist, and at the town of Nuggur, on the western side of the hills, the rains last for nine months, during six of which they are so heavy that the inhabitants cannot leave their houses. The eastern side is drier and more level. North of Nuggur the chain of western ghauts sinks down far below the chinchona zone, and north of 14° they scarcely rise above the plain of Dharwar.[478]
There are several profitable coffee plantations in Nuggur, and I understand that it is in contemplation to establish a teak plantation in that district. Though, as a locality for chinchona cultivation, it is not to be compared with the Neilgherries or Pulneys, or even with Coorg, still it is probable that some of the hardier species might thrive there, and thus the area of the chinchona-plants would be eventually extended from Nuggur, in 14° N., to the hills near Courtallum, in the extreme end of the peninsula.
We embarked at Cannanore on board a little steamer for Bombay. The view from the sea is pretty. On the left is an old fort built long ago by the Dutch; in the centre, looking from the anchorage, is a sandy beach, where elephants were being loaded with the luggage of a detachment of troops just arrived from Calicut; and a little to the right is the native town surrounded by extensive groves of cocoanut-trees, with the blue line of the Coorg and Wynaad mountains visible in the distance. There are three very large buildings on the sea-shore, one of which is the palace of the Beebee, a long house, with the ground-floor let out as a pepper warehouse.