Abstract
CEYLON is perhaps best known to Europeans through being one of the chief coffee-growing countries in the world, and indeed, after its production of cinnamon, which gives it a position that is quite unique, its chief claims to notice from the ordinary untravelled Englishman are derived from its coffee. The plant is supposed to have been introduced into the island by Arabs from the Persian Gulf more than 200 years ago, as there are traditions extant among the Singhalese of its flowers having been offered at the shrine of the sacred tooth of Buddha in Kandy at a remote date. The art, however, of preparing any beverage from its berries was unknown to the natives, or at least unpractised by them until recent times, and it was only in 1827 that the first plantation was opened—by Sir Edward Barnes, the then Governor— with the idea of exporting coffee to the European market. This estate was situated not far from Kandy, and at an elevation of some 1,800 feet above the sea. Thirteen years afterwards the first rush of speculators in coffee occurred, when the average quantity exported was 54,000 cwts., and its value about 150,000l. The effect of this sudden impulse to the enterprise was seen six years afterwards, in 1846, in the export rising to 178,000 cwts. In 1855 it was close upon half-a-million, and in 1868 somewhat over a million cwts., valued at the low rate of about Sexy, per cwt, and grown on an area, including native coffee gardens, of about 200.000 acres. In the following year “leaf disease” (Hemileia vastatrix), a species of fungus covering the under suriace of the coffee-leaf with an orange-red coloured dust composed of the ripe spores of the fungus, appeared on a newly-opened estate in Madulsima, and within a very short time spread over all the coffee-producing districts in the island. The ravages of the pest have been so great that the annual production of cofiee has been reduced to less than two-thirds of what it ought to have been, and the loss to the colony can only be estimated at many millions of pounds sterling. But this subject will be referred to later; at present we must attempt to give some idea of the character of the country in which the great staple of the island grows. Ceylon, as is pretty generally known, consists, roughly speaking, of a large central mass of mountains, attaining an elevation in one case of more than 8,000 feet, and surrounded on all sides by low country. This mountain region, as well as the low country, is composed almost entirely of primary rock (gneiss), and bears such a striking resemblance to the Western Ghaut Range of Southern India, that the island may be considered as an isolated portion of that continent, separated, perhaps, during the upheaval of both by the strong monsoon currents that set continually along the coasts of India, according as the sun is north or south of the line. It is not improbable that other stratified rocks have once overlaid the ancient gneiss, but no rock less tough could long withstand the torrential rains of the south-west monsoon and the injurious effects of a tropical sun. If any such have formerly existed, every trace of them has long ago been washed down to the low country or the sea. It is true that at one spot on the western coast, apparently protected from the violence of the monsoon rains, and where, consequently, the rainfall is very slight, the remnant of a fossiliferous limestone of very limited extent is to be met with, but this, I believe, is the one solitary exception, and its relation to the gneiss formation of the rest of the island and to the coast of Southern India, has not, I imagine, been sufficiently explained. At the present time the soil of Ceylon is formed exclusively by the disintegration of gneiss rock, the débris of which settles in protected spots and on slopes not too steep for its accumulation. In its natural state it is nearly always very strongly tinged with red, and to an ordinary observer appears to be of a very poor character. This no doubt is really the case, but it affords standing-ground for trees and other forms of vegetable life, and a forcing climate does the rest. With a rainfall over the greater part of the mountain zone of more than 100 inches, in some places more than 200 inches in the year, distributed chiefly between the middle of May and the end of December and with such a rapid descent from the upper mountain slopes to the low country—the great river of the island, the Mahawellt-ganga, descends at the average rate of ninety feet per mile for the first sixty or seventy miles of its course—it was only to be expected that extremely deep valleys, steep slopes and precipices, and a general waterworn aspect should be met with on every side. These features are so marked throughout the coffee-producing districts, that it is by no means unusual to find the upper portion of a block of 300 acres some 1,800 or 2,000 feet above the lower, and the whole estate nothing more than a series of rounded spurs and deep ravines, with here and there a precipice of considerable height, with an accumulation of rocks about its base. It is at the foot of these cliffs that the best soil for any purpose of cultivation is found, whilst the worst is generally on the most exposed parts of the spurs. This is no doubt due to the accumulation of vegetable mould, and the nutritive properties of the decaying rocks, which is possible in the one case, but not in the other, to any great extent. It is to the former of these substances, to the result of ages of forest growth and decay, that coffee estates owe their chief value; without it they are almost worthless, as may be seen in the case of old estates, whose surface-soil has been washed away through want of drainage or on the grassy slopes of patanas, where jungle has never grown, and where of course there is no humus. Ori either it is next to impossible to grow coffee profitably. As these patanas or patches of poor grass land in the midst of luxuriant forest form one of the most striking features of the mountain scenery of Ceylon, and as no satisfactory explanation has as yet been given of them, it may be well to mention that a band of quartzite (metamorphosed sandstone) several hundred feet in thickness, occupies a definite place in the gneiss series of the mountain zone, and that wherever this is found cropping out, and by its disintegration forming the surface-soil, there we are certain to find the ground of such miserable quality that nothing but a coarse and all but worthless grass will grow. This, however, does not fully explain the phenomenon. It may be noticed as against the theory that these patanas are due to the frequent burnings by the natives after the land has once been cleared of jungle, and then allowed to fall into grass, that, however land that has once been jungle may be exhausted by bad cultivation, its tendency is not to run into grass, but to relapse into a kind of scrub, and thence in time into jungle—a tendency which is never seen in patana land. The best estates, the climates being similar, are where the humus is deepest, or where its constituents have been carried furthest by percolation into a friable soil. The protection of this humus and upper soil is the first and most important duty of the planter on a new estate, and the drainage, therefore, at the outset, is rendered as complete as possible.
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ABBAY, R. Coffee in Ceylon . Nature 14, 375–378 (1876). https://doi.org/10.1038/014375a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/014375a0