This combination of untoward
circumstances was sufficient cause for the alarm which ensued,
and estates were thrust into the market and knocked down for
whatever could be realized. Mercantile houses were dragged down
into the general ruin, and a dark cloud settled over the Cinnamon
isle.
As the after effects of a "hurricane" are a more healthy
atmosphere and an increased vigor in all vegetation, so are the
usual sequels to a panic in the commercial world. Things are
brought down to their real value and level; men of straw are
swept away, and affairs are commenced anew upon a sound and
steady basis. Capital is invested with caution, and improvements
are entered upon step by step, until success is assured.
The reduction in the price of coffee was accordingly met by a
corresponding system of expenditure and by an improved state of
cultivation; and at the present time the agricultural prospects
of the colony are in a more healthy state than they have ever
been since the commencement of coffee cultivation.
There is no longer any doubt that a coffee estate in a good
situation in Ceylon will pay a large interest for the capital
invested, and will ultimately enrich the proprietor, provided
that he has his own capital to work his estate, that he gives his
own personal superintendence and that he understands the
management. These are the usual conditions of success in most
affairs; but a coffee-estate is not unfrequently abused for not
paying when it is worked with borrowed capital at a high rate of
interest under questionable superintendence.
It is a difficult thing to define the amount which constitutes a
"fortune:" that which is enough for one man is a pittance for
another; but one thing is certain, that, no matter how small his
first capital, the coffee-planter hopes to make his "fortune."
Now, even allowing a net profit of twenty per cent. per annum on
the capital invested, it must take at least ten years to add
double the amount to the first capital, allowing no increase to
the spare capital required for working the estate. A rapid
fortune can never be made by working a coffee estate. Years of
patient industry and toil, chequered by many disappointments, may
eventually reward the proprietor; but it will be at a time of
life when a long residence in the tropics will have given him a
distaste for the chilly atmosphere of old England; his early
friends will have been scattered abroad, and he will meet few
faces to welcome him on his native shores. What cold is so
severe as a cold reception? - no thermometer can mark the degree.
No fortune, however large, can compensate for the loss of home,
and friends, and early associations.
