The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1886-05-19
A FARM IN CEYL0N.
AGRICULTURE ON AN ISLAND IN
THE INDIAN OCEAN.
An American Lady's Visit to a Plan.
tation-Tea, Coffee, and Chocolate
Growing on Bushes-Chili
Peppers and Croton Oil

paper writer OF Columbo, the capital OF
the island. The following extracts
from Miss Ballard's letter describe some
of the leading products and methods of
Orient agriculture:
Mr.. Dewar showed me the chocolate
tree, as I should call it; scientifically, it
is theobroma cacao. The rich fruit con-
tanning the little nuts that make our choc-
olate tell for themselves what the tree
is; and to sail clear of confusion we can
at least be understood by saying choco-
late tree instead of the corrupt "coco,"
or the proper enough ''coca," which the
plant is called in Spanish America, where
it grows. The preferred term should be
the poetical, scientific, proper, and eu-
phonious theobroma, which means "food
for the gods"
From the chocolate bough which I
brought home one of the larger leaves is
about foot long, and nearly half as
wide. Young leaves at the top ends of
the twigs, like the youngest leaves of
several other trees and shrubs here, are
teuder-looking, delicately red, instead of
green, being grown very fast by our heat
and moisture. The ''chocolate nibs" are
in large, shapely, ruby-red fruit. These
seeds have an adherent, sirupy coating,
which is tart and toothsome. When the
nib is divested of its sour coat and is
dry, it has brown, brittle, film, cover
ing which easily shells offfrom the solid,
shining, polished brown nut which is the
final and true kernel, delicious to MUNICH,
and which only needs pulverizing, and
then treating in the various ways prac-
ticed by various people to make the choc-
olate cakes of commerce. Some manu-
facturers put in vanilla havoring. Some
put in sand, to make it weighty, etc.
Kernel and filmy shell are both oily, the
film being the 'shells" of the retail mer-
chant OF foods. They are often incor-
rectly termed 'cocoa Shells" 1t should
be coca shells or chocolate shells. The
specimen fruit now lying on my table is
eleven inches in c rcumference, and eight
and half inches long. Cutting it open
I find thirty-,wo kernels within the
tough, pulpy case, which is ive-eighths
of an inch deep, is straw-colored, has a
ruby-red skin, and is fve-lobed each
lobe having q very minor subdivision,
hardly more than an indentation. When
the harvesters have cut open the fruit,
crosswise, not longitudinally, they adroit-
ly and instantly scoop out the seeds.
Then the ruby-red and delicate yellow
case loses it's beauty, dries up, and makes
a pair of hard, strong, serviceable cups.
Coffee trees by the hundreds of acres
have been cut down, and their slender.
white stumps remain. The present naked
state shows how at much labor these
trees have been protected. An embank-
ment of well-built stone wall stands
around the lower side of each tree to
keep the soil from being washed away
down the steep hill.
Tea requires only three or four years
of growth to become fortune bearer;
and the old coffee estates are now being
covered with tea-plants, at present mere
saplings, on which the planters have
hung their hopes. They expect there
from to revel in greater incomes than
were enjoyed from the coffee of the past
We turned from one new species of
tropical field plant to another, too fast
for my intelligence to pick up their dis
tinguishing appearance. Mr.. Dewar
culled boughs Of the "Cinchona Sacci-
rubra" and the "Cinchona Seedgeriana"
varieties of the plant which furnish
the bilious world with 'fever bark, :"
which enters the sick chamber in the
shape of quininc. This tree I learned to
recognize by sight the quickest of all the
tropic field growths. Our remedial qui-
nine comes from not large tree, having
a broad, bright green leaf, too often red,
making it picture-bush.
The castor-oil plant, banana trees, and
sugar cane for sweet chewing are grown
at Roseneath, in Tamil garden, which
occupies the ravine below 1.-THE store"
Every estate has large building termed
"thc store" which stores the products
of the ground, the tools, and wagons. It
has drying-loft, and near it there is q
large, level, prepared area, for the first
spreading out, the drying, and other pro-
cesses.
The laborers on Ceylon estates are gen.
orally, and until the recent hard times
exclusively, Tamils. The Tamils are from
Southern Hindustan, whence they are
coming and going from year to year;
while, also, there are some whose fathers
have lived here; and in the North, at
Jaffna, there has long existed perma-
nent Tamil colony. In the English
Orient Empire there is only one more nu
merous people, and few or none so his
torically interesting and fascinating. The
structure of the language of the Iamils
shows an ancient culture; something
more than civilization-a culture. On a
plantation their huts are in groups, here
and there, or oftcncr all together. Such
a group is called "the lines" We speak
of going to 'thc lines" meaning to the
lines Of dwellings, equivalent to the
negro "quarters" we read of on Louisi-
ana plantations in slavery times.
No drones are in these cooie families.
Laborcrs are termed "coolies," from the
Hindu word "kuli," meaning q general
laborer. The house kuli runs on errands,
sweeps, lifts, washes dishes, and does
whatever the servants above him bid, he
being the SERVANT of servants" Equally
with their men, the kuli women work
among the coffee stumps, pulling up
weeds, planting the proper growth, or
gathering the planters harvest of leaves,
or of fruit, or of bark, the "fever bark"
as it is often termed here. 1t is the "Pe-
ruvian bark" of America.
Branching OF from the exceptionally
excellent roads made by the government
throughout Ceylon, there are ''estate
roads, )" we'll made, leading to the plant
er,s hunnaloW. his "storen and all over