At Coimbatore I bought a bandy or country cart of the simplest construction, with two wheels, no springs, and a hood of matting spread over curved canes; and started, with relays of bullocks posted at intervals of fifteen miles. This mode of travelling is inconceivably slow, the rate being about three miles an hour, and it was near sunset before I reached Pulladom, a village twenty-two miles from Coimbatore. The road is nearly straight, and planted on both sides with trees of stunted growth, owing to the shallowness of the soil. It was market-day at Pulladom, and people were sitting in rows, before piles of cotton cloths, rice, and dry grains; while an old Tahsildar, in spectacles and snow-white garments, was holding a court under a verandah. In strolling about I came upon the huge idol-car belonging to the village, on heavy wooden trucks. The carvings on its sides were very elaborate, with elephant-headed gods at the angles; but it is only dragged out on very great occasions, and will require new trucks before it is moved again.
All this country round Coimbatore produces much cotton, and cloths are manufactured in great quantities, which supply garments, such as they are, for the people of the plains, as well as for the hill tribes of the Neilgherries. The native cotton is of two kinds, called oopum-parati and nadum parati.[427] The seed of the latter is sown broadcast, in the same field with cholum and cumboo.[428] After the grain is cut, the ground is ploughed between the plants four times, and in the next year the cotton yields a small crop in July, and a larger one in the following January. After the third year the field is manured and cultivated with grain for two years, cotton being again sown when the third crop of grain has been reaped. This nadum cotton is very little cultivated in the Coimbatore district. The chief product is the oopum, the best indigenous cotton, raised, in rotations of two years, with cumboo and cholum.
The oopum cotton is raised on the black soil,[429] an adhesive black clay, while the little Bourbon cotton that is cultivated is grown on red soil. It is picked very carelessly, and the bales are so badly pressed that those which I passed in carts on the road looked as if they would sink in like a feather-bed, if any one sat upon them.
Much pains have been taken by the Government for a series of years to improve the method of cultivating cotton in India, and to introduce American and other species; and very large sums of money have been spent on experiments. Bourbon cotton was cultivated in Coimbatore as early as 1824; and in 1842 Government cotton-farms were established for the growth of New Orleans and Indian plants, both in the black and red soils, under the able superintendence of Dr. Wight, the eminent botanist. In 1849 these experiments were abandoned.
The great importance of the question of cotton supply from India has been long felt, and never more so than at the present time. To meet the requirements of the English markets numerous and costly attempts have been made during a course of years to introduce the American species, which produces a much longer staple than the indigenous Indian kind. Yet American cotton has not hitherto been raised so as to yield a profitable return, excepting in the province of Dharwar, in the Bombay Presidency. The success in this instance is chiefly to be attributed to a suitable soil and climate; but also, in no small degree, to the energy of Mr. Shaw, a former Collector.
Great attention has been paid to the nature of the soils, while less importance than it really deserves has been attached to climate, though climate, and mainly one element of climate—the moisture of the atmosphere—is an essential condition in the successful culture of American cotton. In travelling southward from the latitude of Bombay the climate becomes gradually moister, and at 300 miles there is a very decided change. The American cotton-plant has a very different constitution from the Indian; it cannot stand so much drought, and the conditions required for its culture are an equable and moderate supply of moisture through all the stages of its growth. These conditions are fulfilled in the Dharwar country, which retains a considerable quantity of moisture in the air during the cold season, when other parts of the Bombay Presidency are intensely dry. Wherever this is the case, as in Sind, Guzerat, Broach, and Ahmednuggur, the American plant will not yield a remunerative crop. The indigenous plant is able to endure this dry season well, because it is a native, not of the peninsula, but of the arid country of Sind and part of the Punjab, where it grows wild.
If careful hygrometrical observations were taken throughout the year in the various cotton districts, the results might be compared with similar observations taken in Dharwar; and thus the localities may be ascertained where the American cotton can be advantageously cultivated, so far at least as this depends on the amount of moisture in the atmosphere. The supply of aqueous vapour in the atmosphere, at any period of the year, diminishes as we recede from the coast; but, having once found a centre where the American plant can be profitably raised, in Dharwar, it is advisable to work from that centre, especially in a south-eastern and southerly direction. This spread of the growth of American cotton has already taken place to the eastward of Dharwar, to a considerable extent. The people in the Bellary district, and in neighbouring parts of the Nizam's territory, have for some years grown cotton from American seeds, and value it more highly than their native species.
In Coimbatore, where scorching hot dry winds parch up the plains during part of the year, and where the rainfall varies so much in different seasons,[430] sometimes being thirty inches, and at others only seven inches, it is perhaps doubtful whether it will ever answer to cultivate American cotton on a large scale, yet excellent samples were obtained from cotton raised on the farms, under the superintendence of Dr. Wight. The attention of Sir William Denison, the present Governor of Madras, has been chiefly directed to the improvement of native cotton, by increasing the length of the staple, and lessening the coarseness of the fibre. It is a well-established fact that "the best seeds make the best breeds,"[431] and Sir William Denison proposes to select those seeds to which the largest fibres are attached, to be used for the next crop, and so on in each successive season, the minimum length being increased every year. He believes that, in this way, a permanent addition may be made to the length, and possibly to the fineness of the fibre of the native cotton, which might thus ultimately be able to compete in the English markets with its American rival. Mr. Haywood, the Secretary of the Manchester Cotton Company, on the other hand, strongly urges that attention should be given to the improvement of American cotton. Well-directed efforts in both directions will doubtless be rewarded.
I left Pulladom in the night, and arrived at the large village of Dharapurum in the following morning, a distance of twenty-eight miles. Dharapurum is on the banks of a small river, where there are rice-fields and cocoanut-trees; for wherever there is the means of irrigation, rice is always cultivated. Great quantities of cows and calves swarm along the roads, and in the open spaces of the village, where there are some fine spreading peepul-trees (Ficus religiosa), one of the sacred trees of the Hindus. It has a peculiarly shaped cordate leaf, with a long narrow acumen one-third the length of the leaf, and yellow flowers; and it is venerated from a belief that the god Vishnu was born amongst its branches. Potters' horses, and images of the elephant-headed Ganesa, were placed under the trees, the objects of worship by the villagers, who make offerings of ghee and flowers to them. Literally "an idol under every green tree."