The Wynaad and the Planting Industry of Southern India (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE PLANTER'S LIFE. The planter's life in the Wynaad is healthy, free and open. For a youngster, who is fond of active pursuits but unaccustomed to menial drudgery, there is no profession like it. It has all the charm and none of the hardship of the American ranche or Australian sheep-farm. The planter has at his beck and call domestic servants; he is within easy reach of markets where good fresh meat is obtainable; he can grow his own vegetables, and so far as diet is concerned, he gets much the same food with as little trouble to himself as he did in England. Of course the quality of the beef and mutton of an Indian bazaar is not as high as that to be bought from a West End butcher, but it is on the whole very fair. A great advantage are the domestic servants. Within doors the planter is as carefully looked after as ever in his life, and, should he determine to marry, he can bring his wife to a home where she will take command of a household, and not be herself that household all in one?cook, housemaid, parlourmaid and mistress?with none to help in the wearying duties but an uppish hired girl. The life, so far as the actual home is concerned, . has therefore very much to recommend it. Equally so have the surroundings. For man and woman there are neighbours and the daily post punctually delivered. There is none of that isolation from one's fellow-beings which marks the settler's life on the Pampas, where a strange face is a god-send and a delivery of letters an eventful episode. Bungalows in the Wynaad, generally speaking, are situated from two to three miles from each other. They are built in one storey, and consist as a rule of dining-room, drawing-room, office- room, two or three bed-rooms, and last but not least the verandah, which serves in the day as the smoking-room...