Eight Years' Wanderings in Ceylon

by Sir Samuel White Baker

This is the cheapest and best way of making manure upon an estate, the cattle sheds and pits being arranged in the different localities most suitable for reducing the labor of transport.

The coffee berry, when ripe, is about the size of a cherry, and is shaped like a laurel berry. The flesh has a sweet but vapid taste, and encloses two seeds of coffee. These are carefully packed by nature in a double skin.

The cherry coffee is gathered by coolies at the rate of two bushels each per diem, and is cleared from the flesh by passing through a pulper, a machine consisting of cylindrical copper graters, which tear the flesh from the berry and leave the coffee in its second covering of parchment, The coffee is then exposed to a partial fermentation by being piled for some hours in a large heap. This has the effect of loosening the fleshy particles, which, by washing in a cistern of running water, are detached from the berry. It is then rendered perfectly dry in the sun or by means of artificially heated air; and, being packed in bags, it is forwarded to Colombo. Here, it is unpacked and sent to the mill, which, by means of heavy rollers, detaches the parchment and under silver skin, and leaves the grayish-blue berry in a state for market. The injured grains are sorted out by women, and the coffee is packed for the last time and shipped to England.

A good and well-managed estate should produce an average crop of ten hundredweight per acre, leaving a net profit of fifteen shillings per hundredweight under favorable circumstances. Unfortunately, it is next to impossible to make definite calculations in all agricultural pursuits: the inclemency of seasons and the attacks of vermin are constantly marring the planter's expectations. Among the latter plagues the "bug" stands foremost. This is a minute and gregarious insect, which lives upon the juices of the coffee tree, and accordingly is most destructive to an estate. It attacks a variety of plants, but more particularly the tribe of jessamine; thus the common jessamine, the "Gardenia" (Cape jessamine) and the coffee (Jasminum Arabicum) are more especially subject to its ravages.

The dwelling of this insect is frequently confounded with the living creature itself. This dwelling is in shape and appearance like the back shell of a tortoise, or, still more, like a "limpet," being attached to the stem of the tree in the same manner that the latter adheres to a rock. This is the nest or house, which, although no larger than a split hempseed contains some hundreds of the "bug." As some thousands of these scaly nests exist upon one tree, myriads of insects must be feeding upon its juices.

The effect produced upon the tree is a blackened and sooty appearance, like a London shrub; the branches look withered, and the berries do not plump out to their full size, but, for the most part, fall unripened from the tree. This attack is usually of about two years' duration; after which time the tree loses its blackened appearance, which peels off the surface of the leaves like gold-beaters' skin,—and they appear in their natural color. Coffee plants of young growth are liable to complete destruction if severely attacked by "bug."

Rats are also very destructive to an estate; they are great adepts at pruning, and completely strip the trees of their young shoots, thus utterly destroying a crop. These vermin are more easily guarded against than the insect tribe, and should be destroyed by poison. Hog's lard, ground cocoa-nut and phosphorus form the most certain bait and poison combined.

These are some of the drawbacks to coffee-planting, to say nothing of bad seasons and fluctuating prices, which, if properly calculated, considerably lessen the average profits of an estate, as it must be remembered that while a crop is reduced in quantity, the expenses continue at the usual rate, and are severely felt when consecutive years bring no produce to meet them.

Were it not for the poverty of the soil, the stock of cattle required on a coffee estate for the purpose of manure might be made extremely profitable, and the gain upon fatted stock would pay for the expense of manuring the estate. This would be the first and most reasonable idea to occur to an agriculturist—"buy poor cattle at a low price, fatten them for the butcher, and they give both profit and manure."

Unfortunately, the natural pasturage is not sufficiently good to fatten beasts indiscriminately. There are some few out of a herd of a hundred who will grow fat upon anything, but the generality will not improve to any great degree. This accounts for the scarcity of fine meat throughout Ceylon. Were the soil only tolerably good, so that oats, vetches, turnips and mangel wurtzel could be grown on virgin land without manure, beasts might be stall-fed, the manure doubled by that method, and a profit made on the animals. Pigs are now kept extensively on coffee estates for the sake of their manure, and being fed on Mauritius grass (a coarse description of gigantic "couch") and a liberal allowance of cocoa-nut oil cake ("poonac"), are found to succeed, although the manure is somewhat costly.