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
[Illustration: Plate 5.--Main Works at Messrs. Worms’ Estates, Puselawa,
Ceylon.]
[Illustration: Plate 6.--The Pulping House, Messrs. Worms’ Estate,
Puselawa.]
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
[Illustration: Plate 7.--Interior View of the Pulping House of Messrs.
Worms’ Estates, Puselawa, Ceylon.]
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.
[Illustration: Plate 8.--Coffee District near Puselawa, Ceylon.]