Chapter 5

IN CEYLON'S HILL COUNTRY

When good Kandyans discourse in flowery vein, they say Kandy is only forty miles from heaven. Visitors who have fallen under the charm of the place are more likely to wonder at their moderation than question their ability to measure celestial distances. If Gautama Buddha's "eternal rest" were to be had on earth, Kandy would surely be the reward of Nirvana promised those who have acquired merit.

The beauty of Kandy is based upon naturalness; it is not grand like Taormina in Sicily, nor produced by nature and art in combination like Monte Carlo. Everything connected with the spot is fascinating, even the jungle that by day harbors the jackals which sometimes make night hideous to sojourners. Everybody appears happy; even elephants hauling timber in the suburbs toil cheerfully.

This inland province that formed the kingdom of Kandy preserved its integrity throughout the Portuguese and Dutch invasions of the island; and the English were in possession of the coast section full nineteen years before the Kandyan monarchy succumbed to their power.

This beautiful city was a different place under the native kings. They loved grandeur, apparently, but it was the grandeur of selfish surroundings and luxury. The lake now the center of the city was constructed by the last king, it is true; but its shore witnessed atrocities never surpassed in savage excess. Near the spot where stands a monastery of yellow robed monks of Buddha, the last king assembled his people in 1814 to witness the punishment of the innocent wife and children of a fleeing official accused of treason. By the blow of a sword the head of each child was severed from its body in the mother's presence, even that of the babe wrenched from her breast. The heads were placed in a mortar, and the woman forced under threat of disgraceful torture to pound them with a huge pestle.

When news of this reached the coast the English determined to intervene in the interests of humanity. While the horror was yet fresh in the public mind, a party of native merchants of Colombo came to Kandy to trade. The fiendish king ordered them seized and horribly mutilated. When, a few weeks later, the survivors returned to the sea-coast deprived of ears, noses and hands--with the severed members tied to their necks--the English decided to act immediately. Three months later Kandy was in their possession, and the king an exile in southern India.

From that time, with the exception of a few years when the hereditary Kandyan chiefs were troublesome through finding their privileges circumscribed, the progress of Ceylon as a whole has been remarkable. Perhaps the finest example of benefits coming with England's colonial rule is this "Eden of the Eastern Wave." Slavery and forced labor on public works have been abolished, fine roads constructed everywhere, and adequate educational facilities placed within easy reach.

A visitor perceives no squalor, few beggars, and apparently no genuine poverty. All these advantages have been secured practically without taxing the natives in any manner. Uniform contentment, consequently, is everywhere visible. The naked babies, looking like india-rubber dolls, have apparently never learned to cry.

Oddly enough, the English made Kandy the Saint Helena of Arabi Pasha's exile, until the broken and aged man was permitted a few years since to return to his beloved Egypt.

Itself beautiful with poinsettia, bougainvillea, crotons, hibiscus and palms, a botanical garden in Kandy would seem to have no proper place. But the city possesses one that is almost unique among tropical gardens. It is in the suburb of Peradeniya, four miles out, and it is embraced on three sides by Ceylon's principal stream, the Mahavaliganga. For eighty years the Ceylon government has treated the Peradeniya garden and its associated experimental stations as an investment--and it has paid well, for through its agency the cultivation of cinchona, cacao, rubber and other economic crops has been introduced to the people. Throughout Asia the Peradeniya garden is famous. Whether the claim that it is the finest in the world be correct would require an expert to determine. The botanical garden at Demerara may be as good, if not larger and better.

A layman visiting Peradeniya returns to Kandy in a state of bewilderment. He has seen so many attractive and strange manifestations of nature that lucid description is beyond his power. He is aware, nevertheless, that he has viewed nearly every tree, shrub, plant and vine known to tropical and subtropical climes; shrubs that produce every spice, perfume and flavoring he ever heard of, or that contribute to medicine, as well.

At Peradeniya the palm family has nearly a hundred representatives, including the areca, palmyra, talipot, royal, fan, traveler's, date and cocoanut. The forty or more varieties of crotons include the curious corkscrew of the West Indies, and range extravagantly in colors and markings. Huge Assam rubber-trees have exposed roots suggesting a tangle of octopi. A tree noticeable for its perfect foliage is the breadfruit; and there are sensitive plants that shrink from intimate attention, and water-plants whose roots need not come into contact with the earth.

Here and there are kola trees, cardamom bushes, aloe plants from which sisal is drawn, camphor and cinnamon shrubs, and probably every species of the parasitical family, depending like many human beings upon stronger relatives or neighbors for support. The orchid enclosure would arouse any collector's covetousness. There are foliage plants producing leaves counterfeiting elephant ears, and others that look like full spread peacock tails. A small leaf which the official guide of the gardens is obviously partial to is deep green when held to the light, purple when slightly turned, and deep red if looked at from another angle. The visitor moves swiftly into the sunlight when told that he is standing in the shade of the deadly upas.

A traveler approaching the island of Ceylon hears constantly of the wonders of Peradeniya; and some statements in praise of the garden are taken usually with reserve, especially that asserting there are trees there which develop so rapidly that the spectator can actually see them grow. This seems incredible, but there is ample basis for the statement. After a rain the fronds of the giant bamboo frequently grow a foot in the course of a day. At the office of the director of the garden are records of many measurements proving that fronds have lengthened a half inch in an hour. A tree growing a half inch in sixty minutes is a Ceylon fact. The first time I went to Peradeniya, thousands of flying-foxes, suspended bat-like from the giant bamboos a hundred feet from the earth, were sleeping away the day, while soaring above the trees were hundreds of these queer objects, scolding like disturbed crows.

Peradeniya's visitors come from every land in the world, some traveling great distances to see the wonders of the garden. One has not to be arboriculturist or botanist to appreciate the establishment; it is always entertaining, sometimes amusing, and appeals variously to the tastes of visitors. For example, the Mexican goes involuntarily to the aloe from which his beloved pulque is made, the Egyptian to the date-palm, the Connecticut man to the nutmeg grove, and the New Yorker to the tree under which handfuls of cloves may be scooped up without charge, whereas at home they are acquired one at a time at considerable expense.

Explore the highways and byways of Kandy keenly as one may, nothing is in evidence explaining its manifest prosperity--the place has no distinctive product or business. It is the seat of management, however, of the island's greatest industry--tea raising.

In Ceylon tea is "king." This being the fact, no visitor to the town where the Planters' Association has its administrative machinery can close his ears to tea talk. Elsewhere people talk over their tea-cups; in Kandy, they talk tea over every other kind of cup. Kandy's big hotel bristles with planters in overspreading sun hats, as do club and friendly bungalow verandas. Some are "down" for a day (and a night) from up-country estates, while others are "up" from smallish properties at levels below Kandy. Nearly all have to purchase supplies and draw a few sacks of rupees from the bank with which to pay off their coolies. But some have come to discuss market conditions and prospects with their agents. A few, not yet wholly emancipated from the social side of life in which they were reared, have journeyed to Kandy to rub shoulders for a few days with civilization.

The orbit of each and every one of these transplanted Britons is tea, and this in its primal form. They can have no concern with Steel common. Amalgamated copper or Erie 4's, and to them the jargon of stock exchanges would be as meaningless as Sanskrit platitudes. Their speculative medium is tea--tea in bulk, and pretty large bulk at that.

The daily cable from London summarizing the tea market interests each of these men as vitally as the tale of the ticker interests the American taking a flier in stocks. The story is told in two or three lines, and by a presentation of numerals appearing exceedingly unimportant to the sojourner whose operations in tea never exceeded the purchase of a pound package.

Yes, the figures tell the story--a tale of occasional success, but often of failure and woe. A bracketed set of fractions explains the range of prices for broken pekoes, another set deals with common pekoes, another with orange pekoes, and still another with common souchongs. Then follow such words as "steady," "generally firm," and "somewhat lower"--each a phrase with potential significance. The crux of the communication, like that of a school-girl's letter, comes last. If it reads "general market closed 1-8th penny up," the planter has visions of happiness and affluence, and forthwith orders a "peg." But if the postscript says "1-8th down," the young planter foresees nothing but disaster, and may consider levanting with the bags of rupees by the next steamer from Colombo. A planter is always a bull on prices, while the important buyer in Europe is chronically bearish.

The yearly tea product of Ceylon is aggregating 155,000,000 pounds, and of this Uncle Sam purchases 12,000,000 pounds, while 98,000,000 go to Great Britain. The value of the annual output varies little from $21,000,000--and from this Ceylon supports itself so comfortably that the tea-plant seems to merit adoption as the emblem of the colony.

The rise of the industry affords one of the most remarkable instances of rapid development of an agricultural pursuit. Coffee used to be the dominating crop in the island, until "coffee blight" ruined the industry. Tea was then experimented with. In 1875 barely a thousand acres were under tea; now the acreage is 385,000. A journey from Kandy to Nuwara Eliya, in the mountains, is through an interminable tea-garden, and on every hand is proof of substantial investment of capital. The choicest crops are raised between five and six thousand feet above sea-level, and lands in this zone are worth as much as $500 an acre. The scientific cultivation of tea paid its pioneers handsomely, but the current opinion is that overproduction is killing prices, and that a new crop must be sought--probably rubber.

Ceylon's important tea estates are the property of companies, whose shares are dealt in on the London and Colombo stock exchanges. Small plantations are owned by individuals, usually the persons conducting them. One or two thousand Europeans, mainly Englishmen and Scotchmen, are employed on the important estates as managers, assistants and accountants. Hosts of young Britons work a year or two without compensation for the experience. They are called "creepers," and some of them eventually obtain salaried offices, or embark in the industry on their own account. The laboring force on an estate is provided chiefly by Tamil coolies from southern India, and numbers from one to two thousand. Both men and women contrive to lay by a competence at a wage rate of from eight to fifteen cents a day.

If let alone, the tea-plant would grow to be a tree eighteen or twenty feet high, but by generous top pruning it is kept down to three feet, thus becoming a squat bush possessing a biggish leafing area. Every eight or twelve days the shoots and young leaves are plucked--when treated these become the tea of commerce. Tea-plants are alike, speaking generally, grades being effected by the discrimination of picker and sorter. Fresh buds and tender young leaves make the pekoes, older ones the souchongs. Tea gathered exclusively from buds and tips is called "flowery;" if the first young leaf be included, it is "orange pekoe." In order of quality the Ceylon grades are: orange pekoe, pekoe, pekoe-souchong, souchong, congou, and dust.

Tea-plants are perennial, and are set about four feet apart on hillsides. At three years of age they become productive. Familiar sights in the hills are the coolies with baskets of slips setting out plants wherever unemployed spaces may be found, and groups of Tamil girls plucking buds and young leaves from mature bushes. These girls are happy countenanced, some slender and graceful in carriage and movement, and none express objection to being snapshotted by travelers. The girls' baskets are emptied and contents systematically sorted at convenient places in the field, or at the factory. Essential to every important estate is the factory, for there the leaves are withered, broken by rolling, fermented, fired, and finally sifted into grades preparatory to packing in lead-lined boxes ready to be despatched to the markets of the universe.

It is reassuring to witness the system and scrupulous cleanliness of every step employed in producing Ceylon tea. Anybody who has spent a day on an up-country estate is fairly certain to be friendly to Ceylon tea the rest of his life, for modern machinery does much of the work which in China and Japan is performed by hands none too clean and amid surroundings none too healthful.