Into the Unknown – from Scotland to the Central Hill of Ceylon: the Story of the Early Planters

Today, May 2, 2021 marks the 129th death anniversary of James Taylor, the Scotsman popularly known as the father of tea in Sri Lanka. Hailing from Kincardineshire in Scotland, Taylor arrived on the island of Ceylon as a 17-years old youth to take up coffee planting and settled in the Loolecondera (Loolkandura) Estate in Galaha, Hewaheta. Taylor pioneered the growing of tea in the ailing coffee plantations. His achievements in growing and processing tea were the beginning of a lucrative industry.

The result was an unimaginable, impressive transformation of the landscape of the hill country. Two years after arriving on the island, Taylor wrote to an acquaintance in Scotland and said that those were the most uncomfortable two years of his life. What sort of life these pioneer youngsters endured! The following notes are on the harrowing life experiences of those pioneers that ventured into the unknown with little or no thoughts of whether their pioneering efforts would ever lead to a profitable industry that would change the lives of a nation.

The credit for introducing coffee to India and Ceylon goes to Arab traders. Following its introduction to the island, the coffee plant grew almost wild in home gardens, its snow-white flowers giving an exquisite fragrance to the surrounding area.

The Portuguese, in the maritime areas of the island, concentrated their attention on cinnamon. Coffee was not on their agenda. The Dutch, nevertheless, had ideas of cultivating coffee besides cinnamon and spices but hardly had the expertise. Their first attempt was to plant coffee in the southwestern part of the island in Baddegama area around the Ginganga basin. The soil conditions were unsuitable. Soon sugar cane and later coconut replaced the crop.

The British thought that coffee was growing wild in the Kandyan hills. They surmised that the climate was ideal for commercial cultivation. Pristine tropical forest-clad Kandyan hills were now called crown land. New entrepreneurs bought these lands that flocked to grab the virgin mountains and valleys. These lands were cheap, some going as cheap as five shillings per acre. Within a short period, the rate went up to reach one pound per acre. The expanding empire required large numbers of young and energetic English people. Coffee planting in Ceylon attracted the adventurous young, prepared to face the unknown future many miles away from their homes. Scots were the most prolific adventurers to arrive in Ceylon. Large numbers were from and around Aberdeen. Many were from the same village or the adjoining districts and were often related. Word of mouth spread far and wide. The British trading ships brought young, iron-hearted men to Galle and Colombo. At first, those who grabbed the opportunity of acquiring crown land were the military and the British administrative officers stationed in Colombo. The Ceylon coffee boom started in 1825. It has been compared to the gold rush in California and Australia around about the same period.

A typical story of a coffee prospector described by John Weatherstone is as follows. A proprietor would hire a newly arrived young Scot as superintendent and a few coolies in Colombo. They will start collecting planting utensils, knives, machetes, mammoties, ropes, lamp oil, candles, and boxes of matches in addition to large quantities of rice and other foodstuffs. The most important purchase of the young recruit would be some coffee seeds for the nursery. Setting up a nursery was the first task to be started almost immediately on reaching the designated land. Their journey to Kandy would now take only a day or two by bullock cart and walking, compared to their compatriot military men.

On reaching Kandy, the group would relax for a day or two while buying little things that would come in handy and to replenish the larder. They also acquired a rudimentary first aid box. They would then move on horseback and on foot to the hills, where a surveyor would show the owner his designated land. Surveying was a lucrative profession and was often almost impossible to carry on due to impassable mountainous terrain and colossal trees that would interfere with the ‘sight lines’. Some of the surveys were way off when scrutinized years later.

The proprietor would return to Colombo after handing over the estate to the young pioneer. Thus the young man, uninitiated (often in his late teens), was left in the unknown, unfamiliar tropical mountain forest. While sheltering in a makeshift primitive talipot palm leaf-covered hut, the recruit would get a patch of land cleared for the nursery. This chore was the first task, and the massive effort towards clearing the virgin jungle came next. By the time land was cleared, maybe 50 – 100 acres, it was hoped, the coffee plants in the nursery would have grown to a size suitable for transplanting.

Clearing of virgin forests accelerated to a new level as the coffee prospectors pushed their way through Pussellawa and then to the Kotmale valley and the hills up the Ramboda area. Jungle clearing was the domain of the Sinhalese. John Capper left a dramatic account of jungle felling while visiting a coffee plantation in the hills above Kandy. About 40 ax-men took part in the chore. Small and medium-sized trees were selected to be axed first, leaving small stumps still keeping the trunks up. The large trees above would receive the axe similarly. A conch shell signal dispersed the crowd of noisy ax-men below, leaving those who managed the large trees above. The next conch shell signal alerted those above manning the large trees to sever the bit of trunk that kept the tree upright. With a thunderous noise, the colossal trees with their spreading branches landed on the smaller trees which succumbed to the same fate. Complete clearing the ground was not essential for coffee. Elephants were often used to clear the area, and what is left was burnt.

One of the earliest coffee planters of Ceylon was George Bird (son changed the spelling of the name to Byrde), known as the father of coffee in Ceylon. He started the first coffee estate in 1821, close to Gampola in Sinhapitiya. Sir Edward Barnes, the Governor, was so impressed with this pioneer tropical agriculturist he awarded Bird a tax-free loan of 4000 Rx dollars to start a much bigger venture. He was the first planter to employ the first consignment of Indian labor to work the coffee estates of Ceylon.

Without the gang of Indian coolies the survival of the early coffee and tea planters would have been impossible. According to John Weatherstone, the whole plantation industry benefited, so did the country. Without the Indian coolies the estates also could never have been worked. Many of the brave pioneers that pushed their way through the hostile, unfamiliar tropical rain forests were soon replaced by a new breed of coffee prospectors when officers of the British India Company and many with their capital started arriving on the island. ‘King Coffee’ of Ceylon reached its climax in 1854. Calamitously the coffee prices fell in 1847. This phenomenon led some of the original coffee prospectors to bankruptcy. Large tracts of coffee were abandoned and allowed to turn into scrublands. Fortunately, coffee was not doomed. Coffee prices gradually started to take off, and soon Ceylon coffee regained its kingship. Twenty-odd years later, around 1867, the coffee rust (Hamileia vastatrix) appeared among the plantations that slowly pushed the entire coffee industry to the bottom, never to raise its head again. The enterprising planters soon took over the new craze of replacing coffee plantations with tea boosted by the pioneers such as James Taylor of Loolcondera (Loolkandura) Estate. People used to say that the re-planting of tea was on the graveyard of old coffee estates of Ceylon. By the 1900s, there were more than half a million Indian coolies working in the plantation sectors. They arrived from south India as ‘unberthed’ paying deck passengers in British India Steam Navigation Company vessels. Their trek to the hills was by foot and, many succumbed without ever reaching their destinations.

The talipot palm-leaved shacks were gone. Estate bungalows with granite walls, wood-burning fireplaces, and chimneys, typically English, estate-bungalows came to be. Generally, an estate-bungalow was run by the ‘Appu’ who was the cook and the caretaker. A ‘boy’ would see to the comforts of the master acting as a valet. The garden and the vegetable plot would be in charge of a coolie who was non-resident. There would be a cowshed, a poultry run, and a stable for the horses. The ‘Master Sir’ was the lord of the estate. It was a lonely job. So young and yearning for company, the Master-Sir had to endure untold hardships.

Nevertheless, the early planters took great pains to continue the English way of living despite being almost isolated in their estate bungalows. The great naturalist and marine biologist Ernest Haeckel, while traveling through the plantations, was hosted by a planter who insisted that he appear for dinner in a black jacket and white tie! Of course, Haeckel did not have such formal attire in his traveling kit. But at dinner, his host was formally dressed while the lady wore a formal dinner gown.

John Weatherstone refers to J. P. Lewis’s note on the tragic death of a young planter of Nillambe, Mr. E.A. Morgan. He was riding back from Kandy with cash to pay his coolies. A Sinhalese emptied both barrels of his shotgun that struck the young planter squarely and the assailant made away with the money. The stricken-planter who was not dismounted, made his way to the estate but succumbed to his injury the same evening.

Dysentery, jungle fever (malaria) and, other tropical diseases were rampant. Many succumbed while still being in the prime of their lives. Many were cared for by their staff and friends. A number of them were taken to hotels or boarding houses in Kandy. Many of them died, away from their loved ones, unlamented and unsung in an alien land. There have been instances where the close kinship between the master, appu, and the boy broke. Weatherstone records the curious murders of two young planters by their appus.

The nearest English or Scottish neighbor being 12 to 15 miles away, the early young planters were suffering from isolation. The feminine company being almost non-existent, almost all took Tamil or Sinhalese girls as concubines. James Taylor had a Tamil concubine. At the time of his demise, there was a grieving Sinhala woman.

In a scenario when all creature comforts of good living are at the touch of a button, it is not easy to imagine the hardships those early planters endured. A recent drive up to the Nagrak Bungalow of Nonpareil estate in Belihuloya along a narrow track made us gaze in awe at the marvel these young pioneers had engineered. The passage involves thirty-three sharp hairpin bends. While driving up this crumbling track, we left our lives in the hands of our expert drivers.

What tremendous effort would have gone in the planning and executing this zigzagging track close up to the Horton Plains? No wonder that this mountain track is called ‘Devil’s Staircase’. Sri Lanka reaped the benefits of tea, boosting our island economy, for more than a 150 years. We are indeed indebted to the pioneer, young brave-hearts who paved the way.

A tremendous transformation took place in the tea industry of Sri Lanka since James Taylor’s time. The following statistic exemplifies this statement. The first-ever export of tea to London was a mere 23 pounds (by James Taylor) compared to the 278.5 million kilograms exported in 2020 despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. On the 129^th death anniversary of the ‘Father of Tea’ let us spend a moment remembering this 17-year old Scot who never returned to Scotland but spent the next 40 years in the central hills of our resplendent island.