e also very
irregularly planted with chick coffee. The price was 13,250 rupees, which
he also borrowed at eight per cent. The total amount borrowed was thus
111,250 rupees, and the total coffee land was 403 acres. Up to about this
time the chick coffee had done fairly well, and by 1880 the loan, as we
have seen, was reduced by 30,000 rupees, but soon afterwards this variety
of coffee plant began rapidly to deteriorate all over the district, and
estates like my friend's, which had hitherto given satisfactory profits,
did but little more than pay their working expenses. But, luckily for
himself, my friend, directly after the purchase of each estate, began to
plant them with the Coorg kind of coffee (afterwards fully alluded to in
this chapter) which had been recently introduced, and, as the old chick
trees were from six to seven feet high, and had no lower branches, they
did not for some time interfere with the progress of the Coorg plants, and
yielded enough to pay expenses. As the Coorg plants came into bearing the
old chick plants were removed, and in 1887-88 nearly ninety tons of coffee
were picked, and by that year the whole debt, principal and interest, was
paid off, and a considerable balance was left over to my friend's credit.
In 1889-90 the property gave him a clear profit of L3,350, and it has done
well ever since. Thus with all these tremendous difficulties to contend
with, and in the face of the loss of all the old coffee, and after having
to replant the whole property at great expense, my friend found himself in
the possession of an estate, free of all debt, capable of yielding good
annual profits. And it must be remembered, further, that this result was
obtained, not from virgin forest land exclusively, but from land the
greater part of which consisted of old native plantations.

There are, I need hardly say, no means of ascertaining the profits that
may be expected from coffee in Mysore, but the following analysis of a
Manjarabad estate of 400 acres under cultivation, which has been supplied
to me by a friend, will form a fair guide to what may be reasonably
expected from a Mysore estate where the management is good. In the case
in question, the average crop for the last five years, has been 3-3/4 cwt.
an acre. The expenses were 111-1/2 rupees an acre, and the average profit
111-1/10 rupees per acre per annum, or rather over L7 2s. 6d. an acre. I
may add that I consider this a fair average estimate of what m