The Neilgherry planters have great advantages in the way of means of conveyance from their estates to Calicut and Beypoor, their ports of shipment. The coffee is carried down the Coonoor ghaut on pack-bullocks to Matepoliem, and thence in carts along a good road, by Palghatchery, to the sea-coast. Generally the coffee from the Neilgherry estates is bought by Mr. Perry and Mr. Andrews at Calicut, in rather a dirty state. They have garbling-machines for clearing away all remaining dry pulp, and removing the outer coat from the seeds; and they make their profit by shipping the coffee and selling it in a clean state fit for European use. Neilgherry coffee has an excellent name in the London market.
Europeans, on the Neilgherries, hold land by a puttum or grant from Government, leasing it in perpetuity, so long as the assessment is paid, which is fixed at 1 R. per acre of coffee-land, levied after the third year. By the resolution of the Madras Government, dated August 5th, 1859, the terms on which waste lands can be purchased were regulated. These orders apply to all the regions in Southern India which are suited for coffee or chinchona cultivation. It was resolved to sell outright the fee-simple of all land used for building, and of waste land in the hills, without reservation of quit-rent, and with an absolute and indefeasible title, sold to the highest bidder at an upset price, at twenty times the amount of yearly quit-rent or land-tax. A title-deed will be given under the seal of the Government, declaring the absolute title of the holder, free from all demands on account of land-revenue, with full powers to dispose of the land at pleasure, but not exempting it from payments for municipal purposes. Other parties, however, claiming a previous right in the land, will be free to sue the holder in the Civil Courts, up to a certain time, so that it will be necessary to make careful investigations on this point before purchasing. When the land-tax is not redeemed, Government will issue permanent title-deeds, reserving a quit-rent, and the holder will be free to redeem the tax, on the same terms, at any future time.
With regard to labour on the Neilgherries, there used to be abundant supplies of coolies from Mysore and Coimbatore, but they have recently fallen off, owing to competition on the railway works. Mr. Stanes was paying his labourers 4½ Rs. a month, and women 3½ Rs. He told me that he was particular always to pay every labourer himself, and to be very kind to them, by which means he never found any difficulty in procuring labour. Some of the planters get the services of Badagas, and even of some Kurumbers in the picking-time, but the hill tribes are not generally willing to work on the coffee plantations. There are fifteen coffee estates on the Neilgherry hills.
But the oldest coffee-district in Southern India is Wynaad, a forest-covered plateau about 3000 feet above the sea, which adjoins the Neilgherries on the north. In this district there are upwards of thirty coffee-plantations, some of them, such as that of Messrs. Campbell and Ouchterlony, near the ascent to the Neilgherry hills, being very extensive.[414] There is a great rainfall in Wynaad during the S.W. monsoon, and the crops are very abundant; but at the same time the coffee is not so good as that grown in drier situations, such as the Neilgherries near Coonoor, though the yield is greater. Most of the available land is already taken up. The labour is derived from Mysore, whence the coolies come, often from distances of sixty or seventy miles, returning to their families when their wages are paid. In 1860 the tax on coffee-estates in Wynaad was fixed at 2 Rs. an acre on land actually planted, to be imposed in the third year, at which time the trees are in bearing.[415]
The export trade in coffee, from all the hill-districts of Southern India, was, in 1859-60, as follows:—
| Quantity. | Value. | |||
| From the ports of Malabar | 7,35,19,26 | lbs. | 7,35,177 | Rs |
| From the ports of Canara | 5,13,36,35 | 8,66,644 | ||
| From the ports of Tinnevelly | 23,36,93 | 23,387 | ||
| From the port of Madras | 8,15,89,74 | 2,49,846 | ||
| 20,87,82,28 | 18,75,054 |
In connexion with the clearing of forests for coffee-cultivation, it is imperative that due attention should be paid to the preservation of valuable timber, and the conservancy of the belts of wood near the sources and along the upper courses of streams, so as to ensure the usual supplies of water, and to retain a due amount of moisture in the atmosphere. For the superintendence of these important measures, together with other duties, Dr. Cleghorn has been placed at the head of a Forest Conservancy Department in the Madras Presidency. He strongly urges that the high wooded mountain-tops overhanging the low country should not be allowed to be cleared for coffee-cultivation, lest the supplies of water should be injured.[416] "The courses of rivulets," he says, "should be overshadowed with trees, and the hills should therefore be left clothed for a distance of half their height from the top, leaving half the slopes and all the valleys for cultivation. Immense tracts of virgin forest in the valleys of the Koondah hills are eminently suited for coffee-cultivation. The clearing should only be allowed from 2500 to 4500 feet, this being the extreme range within which coffee planted on a large scale is found to thrive."
There are still thousands of acres of uncleared forests, at suitable elevations, well adapted for the growth of coffee, in the cultivation of which the English capitalist would make large and rapid profits; yet it is not many years since the first coffee-plants were introduced into these hills. Coffee now forms an important item in the exports from the Madras Presidency. There is every reason to hope that the bark from quinine-yielding chinchona-trees may also become one of the valuable products of the hills; and in the following chapter I propose to give an account of the selection of the sites for the first experimental plantations.