After the planting season of 1857 I went with a brother planter for a change of air to Mangalore, and from thence we went to Cannanore—­a military station about 200 miles further down the coast—­and, after a short stay there, rode up the Ghauts into Coorg, where we found the planters busy clearing the forest.  Three years before our arrival Mr. Fowler had opened the Mercara Estate, and in 1855 Mr. H. Mann, and Mr. Donald Stewart had begun work on the Sumpaji Ghaut, while Dr. Maxwell opened up the Periambadi Ghaut Estates in 1856, and in 1857 Mr. Kaundinya founded a plantation in the Bamboo district which lies on the eastern side of Coorg.  The first European plantation was, as we have seen, started in 1854, but for many years previously coffee cultivation had been carried on by natives in the Nalknaad District, though it seems to be quite uncertain as to when or how it was first introduced, or where the first seeds were obtained.

At first all seemed to be going well with coffee in Coorg, and for a good many years the fatal mistake of the planters in clearing down the whole forest, and leaving no shade over the coffee, was not decisively apparent, and from the lands that were thus cleared down on the above-mentioned Ghauts, which lie on the western side of the province, from 700 to 1,000 tons were picked annually when the coffee was at its best.  But what in “the seventies” represented about L100,000 of valuable property, gradually became more and more unprofitable, till at last the estates were abandoned, and the land has now become covered with masses of Lentana (a crawling, climbing, thorny plant which has become a perfect plague in Coorg), amidst which may occasionally be seen the white walls of unroofed bungalows, and dismantled pulping houses, which testify to the melancholy ending of the work of the planters whom I found so busily engaged when, in 1857, I first entered Coorg.

Some attributed the failure to the Bug, some to the Borer, and to leaf disease, while others blamed the heaviness of the tropical rains, which washed away the valuable surface soil, the flight of which towards the western sea was much expedited by weeding with the mamoty (a digging hoe), which loosened the soil, and so prepared the way for its more rapid disappearance.  And these causes no doubt hastened the end, but they were mainly results arising from one great cause—­the neglect to supply shade for the coffee, and this again arose from the circumstance that most of the pioneer planters came from Ceylon where the coffee is planted in the open, and where shade is not required.  And this failure, owing to the neglect of shade, had a most unfortunate effect, for it was owing to this that Coorg naturally acquired such a doubtful coffee reputation in the eyes of the uninformed public—­a reputation which, as I shall afterwards show, arose not from any fault of the country as a coffee field, but solely from the fatal mistake of attempting to plant without providing shade for the coffee.