Eight Years' Wanderings in Ceylon

by Sir Samuel White Baker

Real Cost of Land—Want of Communication—Coffee-planting—Comparison between French and English Settlers—Landslips—Forest-clearing—Manuring—The Coffee Bug—Rats—Fatted Stock—Suggestions for Sheep-farming—Attack of a Leopard—Leopards and Chetahs—Boy Devoured—Traps—Musk Cats and the Mongoose—Vermin of Ceylon.

What is the government price of land in Ceylon? and what is the real cost of the land? These are two questions which should be considered separately, and with grave attention by the intending settler or capitalist.

The upset price of government land is twenty shillings per acre; thus, the inexperienced purchaser is very apt to be led away by the apparently low sum per acre into a purchase of great extent. The question of the real cost will then be solved at his expense. There are few colonies belonging to Great Britain where the government price of land is so high, compared to the value of the natural productions of the soil.

The staple commodity of Ceylon being coffee, I will assume that a purchase is concluded with the government for one thousand acres of land, at the upset price of twenty shillings per acre. What has the purchaser obtained for this sum? One thousand acres of dense forest, to which there is no road. The one thousand pounds passes into the government chest, and the purchaser is no longer thought of; he is left to shift for himself and to make the most of his bad bargain.

He is, therefore, in this position: He has parted with one thousand pounds for a similar number of acres of land, which will not yield him one penny in any shape until he has cleared it from forest. This he immediately commences by giving out contracts, and the forest is cleared, lopped and burnt. The ground is then planted with coffee and the planter has to wait three years for a return. By the time of full bearing the whole cost of felling, burning, planting and cleaning will be about eight pounds per acre; this, in addition to the prime cost of the land, and about two thousand pounds expended in buildings, machinery etc., etc., will bring the price of the land, when in a yielding condition, to eleven pounds an acre at the lowest calculation. Thus before his land yields him one fraction, he will have invested eleven thousand pounds, if he clears the whole of his purchase. Many persons lose sight of this necessary outlay when first purchasing their land, and subsequently discover to their cost that their capital is insufficient to bring the estate into cultivation.

Then comes the question of a road. The government will give him no assistance; accordingly, the whole of his crop must be conveyed on coolies' heads along an arduous path to the nearest highway, perhaps fifteen miles distant. Even this rough path of fifteen miles the planter must form at his own expense.

Considering the risks that are always attendant upon agricultural pursuits, and especially upon coffee-planting, the price of rough land must be acknowledged as absurdly high under the present conditions of sales. There is a great medium to be observed, however, in the sales of crown land; too low a price is even a greater evil than too high a rate, as it is apt to encourage speculators in land, who do much injury to a colony by locking up large tracts in an uncultivated state, to take the chance of a future rise in the price.

This evil might easily be avoided by retaining the present bona fide price of the land per acre, qualified by an arrangement that one-half of the purchase money should be expended in the formation of roads from the land in question. This would be of immense assistance to the planters, especially in a populous planting neighborhood, where the purchases of land were large and numerous, in which case the aggregate sum would be sufficient to form a carriage road to the main highway, which might be kept in repair by a slight toll. An arrangement of this kind is not only fair to the planters, but would be ultimately equally beneficial to the government. Every fresh sale of land would ensure either a new road or the improvement of an old one; and the country would be opened up through the most remote districts. This very fact of good communication would expedite the sales of crown lands, which are now valueless from their isolated position.

Coffee-planting in Ceylon has passed through the various stages inseparable from every "mania."

In the early days of our possession, the Kandian district was little known, and sanguine imaginations painted the hidden prospect in their ideal colors, expecting that a trace once opened to the interior would be the road to fortune.