SECTION XI.. Buildings, Planting, &c., in Ceylon.

BUILDINGS, PLANTING, &c., IN CEYLON.

These comprise a bungalow for the manager, lines, or huts, for the labourers, and pulping-house and store for the preparation and reception of the crop.

Plate 5 shows the main works and buildings at Messrs. Worms’ estates, Puselawa, Ceylon.

The position of the pulping-house should influence the selection of the spots for the other buildings, unless other circumstances determine it. The bungalow should, if possible, be an easy distance from the store, that the manager may without difficulty superintend the work, which at crop time is going on often at night as well as in the daytime. One set of lines for the labourers, for the same reason, should be near to the store, another set may be erected more centrically with reference to the field labour of the estate.

With reference to lines and bungalow, especially the latter, they will be erected according to the manager’s taste, and in a great measure depend upon the material to be obtained in the particular locality for constructing them. True economy will be practised in making permanent and substantial dwellings which will require only slight repairs occasionally.

The selection of the land for the pulping-house and stores and drying-ground is all important, and should only be attempted by a resident manager to whom a long residence on the plantation has afforded an intimate acquaintance with every feature of the land. The advantages which have to be

sought and combined are, availability of water power, both to drive the machinery and for a water-course to the pulper, on a site convenient to the fields from which the crop is to be brought, and so level that it may be fitted for its purposes at the least possible expense.

Water power is not always used, nor is it available on every estate; but as there may be often good reasons to adopt it afterwards, it should always be considered in the primary arrangements. It may be applied to so many economic objects--saw-mills, drying apparatus, &c.--that it should always be applied, if possible, to everything undertaken on the estate requiring a moving power.

Plate 6 is an exterior view of a pulping-house on Messrs. Worms’ estates, Puselawa.

Coffee when gathered from the tree fully ripe is like a rich scarlet cherry, out of which on being squeezed two coffee-berries break forth, each covered with a light skin resembling parchment, and moist, with a sweet mucilaginous fluid which rapidly decomposes. The machine called a pulper is for the purpose of removing the cherry skin or husk; this it does by passing it between a barrel armed with perforated copper, forming a grater, and a sharp-edged board called the chop, which by means of wedges or screws is placed at the proper distance from the barrel to ensure the greater part of the coffee being pressed against it, but not so close that any of the berries should be pricked through their parchment covering. As coffee is seldom uniform in size, much passes forward from which the husk, or pulp, as it is called, has not been completely removed; this, being separated by a sieve worked by the machinery, is returned by hand to the hopper. The coffee, deprived of its husk, goes forward by a channel prepared for it into a cistern, the pulps being thrown off behind; these latter are now generally saved to be carried to the manure pit. The coffee is left to soak in the cistern for the night, or for that length of time which is sufficient to wash off the mucilage, an operation which is facilitated by a slight fermentation--not, however, always conducted with safety to the future quality of the coffee. Pulping-houses are supplied with several cisterns, into which the several pulpings may be run off that the work may not stand still.

Plate 7 gives a view of the interior lower floor of the pulping-house on Messrs. Worms’ estates, Puselawa.

In the pulping-house above the pulpers is a large floor called the cherry loft, into which the coffee in cherry from the field is measured, and from whence, through holes, it is made to fall into the pulpers, from the pulpers it is carried to the cisterns, and when washed is taken out by the labourers to be dried, which brings us to speak of the store and drying apparatus. Before doing so we may mention that the pulper, which is considered a very imperfect machine, is generally driven by four men at two handles, aided by a fly-wheel; the power is immediately applied to turn the barrel, to which is connected a large cog-wheel, which moves a pinion attached, to work a sieve or riddle.

Pulpers turned by water power, if properly erected to resist the strain of the connecting machinery, work with more equality of motion, and therefore do their work better than those worked by hand.

Many improvements in the pulping-machine have been suggested without success; the last, which is now very generally adopted, is called a crusher, and consists in a kind of shield instead of a chop, which presses the coffee against the barrel. This machine is said to do as much work in a given time as the pulper, and with less liability to cut or prick the berry.

It has been said that the pulper is an imperfect machine; it is so in respect to the incompleteness with which it performs the work for which it is constructed. The work

complete, would be to pass forward the whole of the cherry coffee from the hopper, as clean parchment coffee, into the cistern, and completely separate the pulp. Instead of this, not only is there much coffee passed forward unpulped, which has to be returned to the hopper, but much pulp comes forward with the coffee into the cistern. To overcome these imperfections, many hands are required attending the process of pulping; several with sieves receive all the coffee as it comes through the trough into the cistern, and remove all the pulp in it. The object of this is to please the sight by making the sample even, and to take away a material which both, renders the coffee difficult to dry, and, being decomposed vegetable matter of a saccharine nature, is liable by fermentation to injure the quality of the coffee itself. The coffee which is passed unpulped, having been returned to the hopper as it accumulates at the end of the pulper riddle, until the picking has all been pulped, is sometimes passed through another pulper, set closer, and what then remains is dried separately in the husk. The imperfections of the pulper have recently attracted much notice, and improvements are making in it.

We now arrive at the crowning operation of all--Planting. Economy should be studied in every part of the work, and to plant to the best advantage, nothing is more conducive than having the traces of the roads and paths through the clearings already opened if possible, so as to be available for bringing the plants from the nurseries. Plants and stumps are both used in forming plantations; the first are seedlings, reared in nurseries until they are about 8 to 10 inches high, or just crowned--that is, after the appearance of their first lateral branches; the second are the stock and roots of an older tree. Under varying circumstances there is much to be said in favour of each. If the weather is dry and the season advanced, stumps may be planted with less risk, and in less time; but if plants are to be had, and the season favourable, it is generally considered they are the best. In putting them into the ground, if practicable, they should be removed from the nursery with balls of earth about their roots; this is even the most economical, as being almost an assurance against failure, and the tree thus planted receives no check, but begins to grow directly. If, on the other hand, the plants are to be brought too far to carry them with balls of earth, extreme care should be taken to place them with the tap root perpendicularly in the soil. Invariably the effect of a tap root not being placed perpendicularly in the hole is, that when the tree is grown to two or three feet in height, the upper shoot and branches take a paler colour to that of the healthy plant, which is of very dark green, the leaves also become small and elongated, and occasionally somewhat mottled with a yellow tinge. Such plants will frequently spring into flower and fruit prematurely, which generally turns out “boll,” or empty in husk, and as prematurely dies away. This remark is not uncalled for, as it requires extreme vigilance to prevent the labourers carelessly doubling up the tap as they place the plant in the earth. The hole should be well filled up and the earth trodden in round the plant, which should never be buried below the crown of the root.

Nurseries of plants are variously made; much contention has existed on the merits of shade and no shade. Shade is not required, and the plants are best without it; yet it happens most nurseries are in some respects subject to shade, as they have to be formed frequently before any portion of the land is opened, and should be protected by a belt of forest from the fire of the clearing; the jungle being cleared off and carried to the sides of the ground selected. The soil is dug with hoes and picks about two spits deep, and the roots of the jungle carefully taken up, as these would afterwards break the rootlets of the plants when taken up for transplanting. The ground being laid out in beds, is sometimes sown broadcast with coffee-seed, which only requires to be most lightly covered with a little sifted mould, or the seeds are pressed in, in rows, with the finger. Sometimes small seedlings, with two leaves and the seed leaves, are brought from another nursery, or from beneath the coffee-bushes of a plantation or native garden, and lined out into beds about six inches apart; these make by far the best and hardiest plants for planting out into the fields.

We must not omit to notice the necessity for carefully replacing, with as little delay as possible, all failures in the planting. The longer this is delayed the more difficult does it become to do it well; and when neglected, besides making the fields appear irregular and unsightly, the gaps left become weed beds, and so much of the bearing space of the acre being lost, the crop is affected in proportion.

When stumps are planted, a number of buds or suckers make their appearance on the root; one of these only should be left, and the others carefully rubbed off with the finger, as often as the weeding party goes over the field.

The sprout from the bud which is left grows up and becomes the stem of a tree, and throws out its laterals somewhat higher than the tree grown from a nursery plant. The stump generally produces its first crop a little out of season; for planting up failures stumps give the least trouble.

Next to lining and careful planting, nothing enhances the good appearance of a plantation so much as the workmanlike formation of the roads and buildings. It is, therefore, desirable, by the use of a theodolite, to trace the roads accurately before cutting them out. Formerly it was frequently the practice to take the road by the eye from point to point, evading the natural difficulties of rocks or large roots, by taking the breakneck path above or below them. Roads on partial clearings should always have reference to the land which is afterwards to be felled and connected with the same set of works.

Plate 8 shows a coffee district near Puselawa, Ceylon.