From the archives of Cafe Magazine

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Adventures of a Coffee Planter

First published in 1886, these fascinating memoirs give an insightful look into the experiences of
a generation of adventurous, young British gardeners who left in their hundreds during the mid-
nineteenth century to help work the coffee and tea plantations of Southern India and Ceylon. Written
anonymously for the Journal of Horticulture and signed simply, ‘A Planter’, they tell the story of a
youthful nurseryman apprenticed to a firm in Edinburgh who, in 1861, set off for the far outposts of
the expanding British empire - more to escape his servile conditions of employment in Scotland than
to seek his fortune in the jungles of Mysore. Earning just 18s weekly and forced to live in a hovel 10
feet square containing two beds and four people, it was little wonder that aspiring young nurserymen
turned their attention to immigration. Having replied to an ad in the Scotsman for a young gardener
to work as an assistant on an Indian coffee estate, the author readily signed a contract for five years.
Four weeks later, he left on his great adventure, proceeding first to Southampton where he boarded
a ship bound for a new world.

It was on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in the latter end of

October, 1861, that I set sail from Southampton in the good
ship Mooltan of the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company
for Alexandria.
The terrors of the Bay of Biscay past, it was pleasant to land for
a few hours at Gibraltar. A few days’ sail had brought us from every
indication of an approaching dreary English winter into summer
again with all its accompanying flowers and fruits that it had been
my duty to tend with assiduous care under glass. Then the voyage
to Malta and Alexandria was a thing never to be forgotten - the
intense blue of the inland sea baffling the pen.
Our good ship was fast approaching Alexandria with its cloud of
windmills, its fervid heat, its steamy and squalid bazaars reeking
with filth and drowned in swarms of flies. With the advent of the
native pilot on board to guide us into the famous bay came the first
feeling of oppressive heat, and, if it must be confessed, the incipient
regret that I had left dear old England, and the very pronounced
resolve to take advantage of the clause in my agreement with
reference to the optional break at the end of the third year and
return to my native land. The resolve was deepened by a remark
of a fellow passenger to the effect that if I felt the heat so much at
Alexandria he did not know how I would get on in India.
One night in the ancient city and off next morning by rail to Cairo,
where we were compelled to remain four days awaiting the arrival
of the mail steamer at Suez, which was to take us to Bombay. On
the morning of the fifth day we started for Suez by train, reaching
that place some time in the afternoon, after only one brief stoppage
on the way. The journey across the desert was a hot one, but not
devoid of beauty, although not a vestige of vegetation was to be
seen; yet the white and yellow sand hills and undulating ground
was very impressive and stretching out on either side as far as the
eye could reach.
My journey from Calicut to the foot of the Ghauts was performed
overnight in a bullock coach. Arriving at daybreak at the rest house
close under the foot of the mountains, I found a pony from the
Coffee Estate awaiting my arrival to take me to the top of the pass,
a distance of some nine or ten miles, through a magnificent forest
the whole way. After leaving the rest house I rode through a belt of
gigantic Bamboo clumps interspersed with handsome specimens
of the Teak and other hardwooded trees. As I ascended, this
vegetation gradually gave place to the primaeval forest of the
Western Ghauts, one of the wonders of India, so dense that the
leafy tops of the mighty trees completely shut out the midday rays
of the tropical sun.
I was alone in this half-darkened pass in the mountains and all
was silent in the early morning air save the occasional sound of an
invisible mountain stream, as it sprang from rock to rock in the deep,
dark ravine below, or now and then the boom, boom of the black
monkeys as they sprang from branch to branch far overhead. The
scene was weird to the extreme in this grand Cathedral of Nature,
but for me it had its charms. I had not unfrequently pictured what
a real tropical forest must be like, but the reality far exceeded my
expectations.
Scattered at intervals over the whole of the Bamboo jungles
of Wynaad were small communities of a certain caste of natives
called Jain Coorumbers or Honey Coorumbers - that is, men, part
at least of whose occupation was to climb the high trees and rocks
and collect the honey-combs.
These communities had no fixed residence but kept moving from
place to place in the jungle. After the advent of the speculative
English planters in the district this timid race of Coorumbers
began gradually to approach the clearings and eventully to do a
little work, and as time went on and confidence was established
they would come in large gangs and do all the felling, clearing and
building work of an estate.
Not far from the top of the Ghaut I rode on to the first Coffee
estate I had seen and was most hospitably received by the
resident planter. The Coffee plant at that time of year (December)
looks its best, picking operations are in full swing, and the estates
are generally at that season free from weeds and everything was
tidy and in order. I was charmed with my first view of a plantation,
for the Coffee is unquestionably a very beautiful shrub, and when
in full berry, as it was on this my first acquaintance with it, I thought
I had never beheld a more beautiful plant. And a few months later,
when I saw it in full flower, I simply put it down as the queen of all
evergreen shrubs.

From the archives of Cafe Magazine

www.cafemagazine.co.uk