From the pulper-box the parchment coffee is shoveled to the "cisterns"--enormous square wooden vats. In these the new coffee is placed, just covered with water, in which state it is left for periods varying from twelve to eighteen hours, according to the judgment of the manager. The object of this soaking is to produce a slight fermentation of the mucilaginous matter adhering to "the parchment," in order to facilitate its removal, as otherwise it would harden the skin, and render the coffee very difficult to peel or clean. When I inspected the works on Soolookande, several cisterns of fermented coffee were being turned out, to admit other parcels from the pulper, and also to enable the soaked coffee to be washed. Coolies were busily employed shoveling the berries from one cistern to another; others were letting on clean water. Some were busy stirring the contents of the cisterns briskly about; while some, again, were letting off the foul water; and a few were engaged in raking the thoroughly-washed coffee from the washing platforms to the barbecues.
The barbecues on this property were very extensive: about twenty thousand square feet, all gently sloped away from their centres, and smooth as glass. They were of stone, coated over with lime well polished, and so white, that it was with difficulty I could look at them with the sun shining full upon their bright surfaces. Over these drying grounds the coffee, when quite clean and white, is spread, at first thickly, but gradually more thinly, until, on the last day, it is placed only one bean thick. Four days' sunning are usually required, though occasionally many more are necessary before the coffee can be heaped away in the store without risk of spoiling. All that is required is to dry it sufficiently for transport to Kandy, and thence to Colombo, where it undergoes a final curing previous to having its parchment skin removed, and the faulty and broken berries picked out. Scarcely any estates are enabled to effectually dry their crops, owing to the long continuance of wet weather on the hills.
The "dry floor" of this store resembled very much the inside of a malting-house. It was nicely boarded, and nearly half full of coffee, white and in various stages of dryness. Some of it, at one end, was being measured into two bushel bags, tied up, marked and entered in the "packed" book, ready for dispatch to Kandy. Every thing was done on a system; the bags were piled up in tens; and the loose coffee was kept in heaps of fixed quantities as a check on the measuring. Bags, rakes, measures, twine, had all their proper places allotted them. Each day's work must be finished off-hand at once; no putting off until to-morrow can be allowed, or confusion and loss will be the consequence. Any heaps of half dried coffee, permitted to remain unturned in the store, or not exposed on the "barbecue," will heat, and become discolored, and in that condition is known among commercial men as "Country Damaged."
