husk by being pounded in a wooden mortar.

This is a style of cultivation in which the Cingalese particularly
excel; nothing can be more beautifully regular than their flights of
green terraces from the bottoms of the valleys to the very summits of
the hills: and the labor required in their formation must be immense,
is they are frequently six feet one above the other. The Cingalese are
peculiarly a rice-growing nation; give them an abundant supply of water
and land on easy terms, and they will not remain idle.

CHAPTER V.

Real Cost of Land--Want of Communication--Coffee-planting--Comparison
between French and English
Settlers--Landslips--Forest-clearing--Manuring--The Coffee
Bug--Rats--Fatted Stock--Suggestions for Sheep-farming--Attack of a
Leopard--Leopards and Chetahs--Boy Devoured--Traps--Musk Cats and the
Mongoose--Vermin of Ceylon.

What is the government price of land in Ceylon? and what is the real
cost of the land? These are two questions which should be considered
separately, and with grave attention by the intending settler or
capitalist.

The upset price of government land is twenty shillings per acre; thus,
the inexperienced purchaser is very apt to be led away by the
apparently low sum per acre into a purchase of great extent. The
question of the real cost will then be solved at his expense. There are
few colonies belonging to Great Britain where the government price of
land is so high, compared to the value of the natural productions of
the soil.

The staple commodity of Ceylon being coffee, I will assume that a
purchase is concluded with the government for one thousand acres of
land, at the upset price of twenty shillings per acre. What has the
purchaser obtained for this sum? One thousand acres of dense forest, to
which there is no road. The one thousand pounds passes into the
government chest, and the purchaser is no longer thought of; he is left
to shift for himself and to make the most of his bad bargain.

He is, therefore, in this position: He has parted with one thousand
pounds for a similar number of acres of land, which will not yield him
one penny in any shape until he has cleared it from forest. This he
immediately commences by giving out contracts, and the forest is
cleared, lopped and burnt. The ground is then planted with coffee and
the planter has to wait three years for a return. By the time of full
bearing the whole cost of felling, burning, planting and cleaning w