Gold, Sport, and Coffee Planting in Mysore With chapters on coffee planting in Coorg, the Mysore representative assembly, the Indian congress, caste and the Indian silver question, being the 38 years' experiences of a Mysore planter

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by Robert H. Elliot

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Title: Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore

Author: Robert H. Elliot

Release Date: October 14, 2004 [EBook #13746]

Language: English

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GOLD, SPORT, AND COFFEE PLANTING IN MYSORE

WITH CHAPTERS ON

COFFEE PLANTING IN COORG, THE MYSORE REPRESENTATIVE ASSEMBLY, THE INDIAN CONGRESS, CASTE, AND THE INDIAN SILVER QUESTION

BEING THE 38 YEARS' EXPERIENCES OF A MYSORE PLANTER

BY

ROBERT H. ELLIOT

AUTHOR OF EXPERIENCES OF A PLANTER, WRITTEN ON THEIR FOREHEADS, ETC.

WITH A MAP IN COLOURS

WESTMINSTER

1898.

DEDICATION.

I have much pleasure in dedicating this book to my friend SIR K. SHESHADRI IYER, K.C.S.I., Dewan of Mysore, and trust that it may be useful in making more fully known the resources of the State whose affairs he has for many years so wisely and ably administered.

PREFACE.

In the year 1871 I published The Experiences of a Planter in the Jungles of Mysore, and had intended to bring out a new edition of it, but, from various causes, the project was delayed, and when I at last took the matter in hand, I found that so many things had happened since 1871 that it was necessary to write a new book. In this, hardly anything of the Experiences has been reproduced, except a very few natural history notes and the chapter on Caste, a subject to which I would particularly call the attention of those interested in Indian missions.

I have been much assisted by informants too numerous for mention here, and can only allude to those who have most conspicuously aided me. Amongst these I am much indebted to my friend Sir K. Sheshadri Iyer, K.C.S.I., Dewan of Mysore, for access given me to information in the possession of the Government, and for returns specially prepared for the book. From my friends Mr. Graham Anderson and Mr. Brooke Mockett, two of the most able and experienced planters in Mysore, I have derived much information and assistance. I am particularly obliged to my friend Dr. Voelcker[1] for many valuable hints, and the chapter on manures has had the advantage of being read by him. For information as regards the history of coffee in Coorg I am much indebted to Mr. Meynell, who represents the large interests of Messrs. Matheson and Co. in that province, and indeed, without his aid, I could not at all have done full justice to the subject. To Mr. Grey, manager of the Nundydroog mine, I am indebted for information as regards the gold mines, and for the kind assistance he in many ways afforded me when I visited them last January. I am also obliged to Colonel Grant, Superintendent of the Mysore Revenue, Survey and Settlement Department, for information as regards game, and the proposed Game Act for Mysore.

I had intended to add a chapter on the cultivation of cardamoms and pepper, but have not done so, because, for the want of recent information from those specially engaged in these cultivations, I could not feel confident of doing full justice to the subject. I may, however, say that as regards cardamoms, I have good reason for supposing that there is not much to be added to the chapter on them which appeared in the Experiences.

Though I have collected many experiences, I am of course aware that many more remain to be collected, and I should feel particularly obliged if planters and those who have any experiences to give me (natural history and sporting information would be very welcome) would be kind enough to do so. These I would propose to incorporate in an improved edition, which I look forward to bringing out when a sufficient amount of additional information has been collected. If those who have any information to give, suggestions to make, or criticisms to offer, would be kind enough to communicate with me, an improved edition might be brought out which would be highly valuable to all tropical agriculturists, and all those interested in the various subjects on which I have written.

My Indian address is Bartchinhulla, Saklaspur, Mysore State, and home address, Clifton Park, Kelso, Roxburghshire.

ROBERT H. ELLIOT.

[1] Dr. Voelcker, Consulting Chemist to the Royal Agricultural Society of England, was, by the permission of the Society, employed for upwards of a year by the Government in India; and his Report on the Improvement of Indian Agriculture is an elaborate, work, of upwards of 400 pages, and contains a large body of carefully digested information, remarks, and opinions which will be of great value to the Government, and of much practical value to planters, and all tropical agriculturists.

CONTENTS.

Map of Mysore

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.—PROGRESS IN MYSORE.

As I now turn my thoughts back to the year 1855, when, being then in my eighteenth year, I sailed for India to seek my fortunes in the jungles of Mysore, it is difficult to believe that the journey is still the same, or that India is still the same country on the shores of which I landed so long ago. But after all, as a matter of fact, the journey is, practically speaking, not the same, and still less is India the same India which I knew in 1855. For the route across Egypt, which was then partly by rail, partly by water, and partly across the desert in transits, the bumping of which I even now distinctly remember, has been exchanged for the Suez Canal, and the frequent steamers with their accelerated rate of speed have altered all the relations of distances, and on landing at Bombay the traveller of 1855 would now find it difficult to recognize the place. For then there were the old fort walls and ditches, and narrow streets filled with a straggling throng of carts and people, while now the fort walls and ditches no longer exist, and the traveller drives into a city with public buildings, broad roads and beautiful squares and gardens, that would do credit to any capital in the world, and sees around him all the signs of advanced and advancing civilization. Then as, perhaps, he views the scene from the Tower of the Elphinstone College, and looks down on the beautiful city, on the masts of the shipping lying in the splendid harbour, and on the moving throngs of people to whom we have given peace and order, what thoughts must fill his mind! And what thoughts further, as on turning to view the scene without the city he sees on one side of it the tall chimneys of the numerous mills which have sprung up in recent times, and which tell of the conjunction of English skill and capital with the cheap hand-labour of the East—a combination that is destined, and at no very distant period ahead, to produce remarkable effects. But I must not wander here into the consideration of matters to which I shall again have occasion to refer when I come to remark on the wonderful progress made in India in recent years owing to the introduction of English skill and capital, and shall now briefly describe my route to the western jungles of Mysore.

When I landed in Bombay, in 1855, the journey to the Native State of Mysore, now so easy and simple, was one requiring much time and no small degree of trouble, for the railway lines had then advanced but little—the first twenty miles in all India having been only opened near Bombay in 1853. A land journey then was not to be thought of, and as there were no coasting-steamers, I was compelled to take a passage in a Patama (native sailing craft) which was proceeding down the western coast with a cargo of salt which was stowed away in the after-part of the vessel. Over this was a low roofed and thatched house, the flooring of which was composed of strips of split bamboo laid upon the salt. On this I placed my mattress and bedding. My provisions for the voyage were very simple—a coop with some fowls, some tea, sugar, cooking utensils, and other small necessaries of life. A Portuguese servant I had hired in Bombay cooked my dinner and looked after me generally. We sailed along the sometimes bare, and occasionally palm-fringed, shores with that indifference to time and progress which is often the despair and not unfrequently the envy of Europeans. The hubble-bubble passed from mouth to mouth, and the crew whiled away the evening hours with their monotonous chants. We always anchored at night; sometimes we stopped for fishing, and once ran into a small bay—one of those charming scenic gems which can only be found in the eastern seas—to land some salt and take in cocoa-nuts and other items. As for the port of Mangalore, for which I was bound, it seemed to be, though only about 450 miles from Bombay, an immense distance away, and practically was nearly as far as Bombay is from Suez. At last, after a nine days' sail, we lay to off the mouth of the harbour into which, for reasons best known to himself, the captain of the craft did not choose to enter, and I was taken ashore in a canoe to be kindly received by the judge of the collectorate of South Kanara, to whom I had a letter of introduction.

After spending some pleasant days at Mangalore I set out for Manjarabad, the talook or county which borders on the South Kanara district—in what is called a manshiel—a kind of open-sided cot slung to a bamboo pole which projects far enough in front and rear to be placed with ease on the shoulders of the bearers. Four of these men are brought into play at once, while four others run along to relieve their fellows at intervals. I started in the afternoon, and was carried up the banks of a broad river by the side of which hero and there the road wound pleasantly along. In the course of a few hours night fell, and then all nature seemed to come into active life with the hum of insects, the croaking of frogs, and various other indications of an abounding animal life. Presently I was lulled to sleep by the monotonous chant of the bearers—sleep only partially broken when changes of the whole set of bearers had to be made—and awoke the following morning to find myself some fifty miles from the coast, and amidst the gorges of the Ghauts, with vast heights towering upwards, and almost all around, while the river, which had now sunk to what in English ideas would still seem to be one of considerable size, appeared as if it had just emerged from the navel of a mountain-barrier some miles ahead. After a few miles more we passed the last hamlet of what was then called the Company's Country, and leaving the inhabited lands—if indeed in a European sense they may be called so—behind us, began to ascend the twenty miles of forest-clad gorges which lead up into the tableland of Mysore. The ascent was necessarily slow, and it was not till late in the afternoon that I saw, some 500 feet above me, and at a total elevation of about 3,200 feet above sea-level, the white walls of the only planter's bungalow in the southern part of Mysore. To this pioneer of our civilization—Mr. Frederick Green, who had begun work in 1843—I had a letter of introduction, and was most kindly received, and put in the way of acquiring land which I started on and still hold. To the south, in the adjacent little province of Coorg—now, as we shall afterwards see, an extensive coffee-field—the first European plantation had been started the year before, i.e., 1854, while to the north some fifty to seventy miles away the country was, in a European sense, occupied by only three English, or, to be exact, Scotch planters. In 1856 I started active life as a planter on my own account, about twelve miles away from the estate of Mr. Green, while in the same year two other planters—Scotchmen by the way—made their appearance. The southern part of Mysore was thus occupied by four planters, and we were all about twelve miles from each other. It is difficult to conceive the state of isolation in which we lived, and as we were all Europeanly speaking single handed, and could seldom leave home, we often had not for weeks together an opportunity of seeing a single white face, and so rare indeed was a visit from a neighbour that, when one was coming to see me, I used to sit on a hill watching for the first glimpse of him, like a shipwrecked mariner on a desert island watching for the glimpse of a sail on the horizon. As for the Indian mutinies, which broke out the year after I had started work, they might have been going on in Norway as far as we were concerned; none of us at all appreciated the importance and gravity of the events that were occurring, and one of my neighbours said that it was not worth while trying to understand the situation, and that we had better wait for the book that would be sure to come out when things had settled down. And the native population around us appeared to know as little of the mutinies as we did. They seemed to be aware that some disturbance was going on somewhere in the north, and that represented the whole extent of their knowledge of the subject.

I have described our life as having been one of great isolation so far as European society was concerned, but I never felt it to be a dull one, nor did my neighbours ever complain of it, though we only took a holiday of a few weeks in the year. But we had plenty of work, and big game shooting, and the occupation was an interesting one, and as I even now return with pleasure every winter to my planter's life, this proves that my earlier days must have left behind them many pleasant associations. And the occupation and sport were really all we had to depend on. We had few books, nor any means of getting them, for I need hardly say that pioneer planters, who have to keep themselves and their coffee till the latter comes into bearing, cannot afford to buy anything that can be dispensed with. But after all this perhaps was no disadvantage, for, as a great moral philosopher has pointed out, nothing tends to weaken the resources of the mind so much as a miscellaneous course of reading unaccompanied (as it usually is, I may remark) by reflection. The management of people, the business of an estate, the exercise of the inventive powers, the cultivation of method, the sharpening of the observing and combining faculties, which are so well developed by big game shooting, yield real education, or the leading out and development of the mental resources, while books provide the