• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
Adventures of a Coffee Planter 
First published in 1886, these fascinating memoirs give an insightful look into the experiences of a generation of adventurous, young British gardeners who left in their hundreds during the mid-nineteenth century to help work the coffee and tea plantations of Southern India and Ceylon. Writtenanonymously for the Journal of Horticulture and signed simply, ‘A Planter’, they tell the story of ayouthful nurseryman apprenticed to a rm in Edinburgh who, in 1861, set off for the far outposts of the expanding British empire - more to escape his servile conditions of employment in Scotland thanto seek his fortune in the jungles of Mysore. Earning just 18s weekly and forced to live in a hovel 10 feet square containing two beds and four people, it was little wonder that aspiring young nurserymenturned their attention to immigration. Having replied to an ad in the Scotsman for a young gardener to work as an assistant on an Indian coffee estate, the author readily signed a contract for ve years.Four weeks later, he left on his great adventure, proceeding rst to Southampton where he boarded a ship bound for a new world.
It
was on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in the latter end of October, 1861, that I set sail from Southampton in the goodship Mooltan of the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Companyfor Alexandria.The terrors of the Bay of Biscay past, it was pleasant to land for a few hours at Gibraltar. A few days’ sail had brought us from everyindication of an approaching dreary English winter into summer again with all its accompanying owers and fruits that it had beenmy duty to tend with assiduous care under glass. Then the voyageto Malta and Alexandria was a thing never to be forgotten - theintense blue of the inland sea bafing the pen.Our good ship was fast approaching Alexandria with its cloud of 
 From the archives of 
Cafe Magazine
www.cafemagazine.co.uk 
 
windmills, its fervid heat, its steamy and squalid bazaars reekingwith lth and drowned in swarms of ies. With the advent of thenative pilot on board to guide us into the famous bay came the rstfeeling of oppressive heat, and, if it must be confessed, the incipientregret that I had left dear old England, and the very pronouncedresolve to take advantage of the clause in my agreement withreference to the optional break at the end of the third year andreturn to my native land. The resolve was deepened by a remarkof a fellow passenger to the effect that if I felt the heat so much atAlexandria he did not know how I would get on in India.One night in the ancient city and off next morning by rail to Cairo,where we were compelled to remain four days awaiting the arrivalof the mail steamer at Suez, which was to take us to Bombay. Onthe morning of the fth day we started for Suez by train, reachingthat place some time in the afternoon, after only one brief stoppageon the way. The journey across the desert was a hot one, but notdevoid of beauty, although not a vestige of vegetation was to beseen; yet the white and yellow sand hills and undulating groundwas very impressive and stretching out on either side as far as theeye could reach.My journey from Calicut to the foot of the Ghauts was performedovernight in a bullock coach. Arriving at daybreak at the rest houseclose under the foot of the mountains, I found a pony from theCoffee Estate awaiting my arrival to take me to the top of the pass,a distance of some nine or ten miles, through a magnicent forestthe whole way. After leaving the rest house I rode through a belt of gigantic Bamboo clumps interspersed with handsome specimensof the Teak and other hardwooded trees. As I ascended, thisvegetation gradually gave place to the primaeval forest of theWestern Ghauts, one of the wonders of India, so dense that theleafy tops of the mighty trees completely shut out the midday raysof the tropical sun.I was alone in this half-darkened pass in the mountains and allwas silent in the early morning air save the occasional sound of aninvisible mountain stream, as it sprang from rock to rock in the deep,dark ravine below, or now and then the boom, boom of the black
 
monkeys as they sprang from branch to branch far overhead. Thescene was weird to the extreme in this grand Cathedral of Nature,but for me it had its charms. I had not unfrequently pictured whata real tropical forest must be like, but the reality far exceeded myexpectations.Scattered at intervals over the whole of the Bamboo junglesof Wynaad were small communities of a certain caste of nativescalled Jain Coorumbers or Honey Coorumbers - that is, men, partat least of whose occupation was to climb the high trees and rocksand collect the honey-combs.These communities had no xed residence but kept moving fromplace to place in the jungle. After the advent of the speculativeEnglish planters in the district this timid race of Coorumbersbegan gradually to approach the clearings and eventully to do alittle work, and as time went on and condence was establishedthey would come in large gangs and do all the felling, clearing andbuilding work of an estate.Not far from the top of the Ghaut I rode on to the rst Coffeeestate I had seen and was most hospitably received by theresident planter. The Coffee plant at that time of year (December)looks its best, picking operations are in full swing, and the estatesare generally at that season free from weeds and everything wastidy and in order. I was charmed with my rst view of a plantation,for the Coffee is unquestionably a very beautiful shrub, and whenin full berry, as it was on this my rst acquaintance with it, I thoughtI had never beheld a more beautiful plant. And a few months later,when I saw it in full ower, I simply put it down as the queen of allevergreen shrubs.
From the archives of 
Cafe Magazine
www.cafemagazine.co.uk
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...