Eight Years' Wanderings in Ceylon. Samuel White Baker
continues to advance. At length the miserable few are no longer sufficient to cultivate the rice-lands; their numbers will not even suffice for driving their buffaloes. The jungle closes round the village; cholera finishes the scene by sweeping off the remnant; and groves of cocoa-nut trees, towering over the thorny jungle, become monuments sacred to the memory of an exterminated village.
The number of villages which have thus died out is almost incredible. In a day's ride of twenty miles, I have passed the remains of as many as three or four, how many more may have vanished in the depths of the jungle!
Wherever the cocoa-nut trees are still existing, the ruin of the village must have been comparatively recent, as the wild elephants generally overturn them in a few years after the disappearance of the inhabitants, browsing upon the succulent tops, and destroying every trace of a former habitation.
There is no doubt that when sickness is annually reducing the population of a district, the inhabitants, and accordingly the produce of the land, must shortly come to an end. In all times of pestilence the first impulse among the natives is to fly from the neighborhood, but at present there is no place of refuge. It is, therefore, a matter of certainty that the repair of one of the principal tanks would draw together in thousands the survivors of many half-perished villages, who would otherwise fall victims to succeeding years of sickness.
The successful cultivation of rice at all times requires an extensive population, and large grazing-grounds for the support of the buffaloes necessary for the tillage of the land.
The labor of constructing dams and forming watercourses is performed by a general gathering, similar to the American principle of a "bee;" and, as "many hands make light work," the cultivation proceeds with great rapidity. Thus a large population can bring into tillage a greater individual proportion of ground than a smaller number of laborers, and the rice is accordingly produced at a cheaper rate.
Few people understand the difficulties with which a small village has to contend in the cultivation of rice. The continual repairs of temporary dams, which are nightly trodden down and destroyed by elephants; the filling up of the water-courses from the same cause; the nocturnal attacks upon the crops by elephants and hogs; the devastating attacks of birds as the grain becomes ripe; a scarcity of water at the exact moment it is required; and other numerous difficulties which are scarcely felt by a large population.
By the latter the advantage is enjoyed of the division of labor. The dams are built of permanent material; every work is rapidly completed; the night-fires blaze in the lofty watch-house, while the shouts of the watchers scare the wild beasts from the crops. Hundreds of children are daily screaming from their high perches to scare away the birds. Rattles worked by long lines extend in every direction, unceasingly pulled by the people in the watch-houses; wind-clackers (similar to our cherry-clackers) are whirling in all places; and by the division of the toil among a multitude the individual work proceeds without fatigue.
Every native is perfectly aware of this advantage in rice cultivation; and were the supply of water ensured to them by the repair of a principal tank, they would gather around its margin. The thorny jungles would soon disappear from the surface of the ground, and a densely-populated and prosperous district would again exist where all has been a wilderness for a thousand years.
The system of rice cultivation is exceedingly laborious. The first consideration being a supply of water, the second is a perfect level, or series of levels, to be irrigated. Thus a hill-side must be terraced out into a succession of platforms or steps; and a plain, however apparently flat, must, by the requisite embankments, be reduced to the most perfect surface.
This being completed, the water is laid on for a certain time, until the soil has become excessively soft and muddy. It is then run off, and the land is ploughed by a simple implement, which, being drawn by two buffaloes, stirs up the soil to a depth of eighteen inches. This finished, the water is again laid on until the mud becomes so soft that a man will sink knee-deep. In this state it is then trodden over by buffaloes, driven backward and forward in large gangs, until the mud is so thoroughly mixed that upon the withdrawal of the water it sinks to a perfect level.
Upon this surface the paddy, having been previously soaked in water, is now sown; and, in the course of a fortnight, it attains a height of about four inches. The water is now again laid on, and continued at intervals until within a fortnight of the grain becoming ripe. It is then run off; the ground hardens, the ripe crop is harvested by the sickle, and the grain is trodden out by buffaloes. The rice is then separated from the paddy or husk by being pounded in a wooden mortar.
This is a style of cultivation in which the Cingalese particularly excel; nothing can be more beautifully regular than their flights of green terraces from the bottoms of the valleys to the very summits of the hills: and the labor required in their formation must be immense, is they are frequently six feet one above the other. The Cingalese are peculiarly a rice-growing nation; give them an abundant supply of water and land on easy terms, and they will not remain idle.
CHAPTER V
Real Cost of Land—Want of Communication—Coffee-planting—Comparison between French and English Settlers—Landslips—Forest-clearing—Manuring—The Coffee Bug—Rats—Fatted Stock—Suggestions for Sheep-farming—Attack of a Leopard—Leopards and Chetahs—Boy Devoured—Traps—Musk Cats and the Mongoose—Vermin of Ceylon.
What is the government price of land in Ceylon? and what is the real cost of the land? These are two questions which should be considered separately, and with grave attention by the intending settler or capitalist.
The upset price of government land is twenty shillings per acre; thus, the inexperienced purchaser is very apt to be led away by the apparently low sum per acre into a purchase of great extent. The question of the real cost will then be solved at his expense. There are few colonies belonging to Great Britain where the government price of land is so high, compared to the value of the natural productions of the soil.
The staple commodity of Ceylon being coffee, I will assume that a purchase is concluded with the government for one thousand acres of land, at the upset price of twenty shillings per acre. What has the purchaser obtained for this sum? One thousand acres of dense forest, to which there is no road. The one thousand pounds passes into the government chest, and the purchaser is no longer thought of; he is left to shift for himself and to make the most of his bad bargain.
He is, therefore, in this position: He has parted with one thousand pounds for a similar number of acres of land, which will not yield him one penny in any shape until he has cleared it from forest. This he immediately commences by giving out contracts, and the forest is cleared, lopped and burnt. The ground is then planted with coffee and the planter has to wait three years for a return. By the time of full bearing the whole cost of felling, burning, planting and cleaning will be about eight pounds per acre; this, in addition to the prime cost of the land, and about two thousand pounds expended in buildings, machinery etc., etc., will bring the price of the land, when in a yielding condition, to eleven pounds an acre at the lowest calculation. Thus before his land yields him one fraction, he will have invested eleven thousand pounds, if he clears the whole of his purchase. Many persons lose sight of this necessary outlay when first purchasing their land, and subsequently discover to their cost that their capital is insufficient to bring the estate into cultivation.
Then comes the question of a road. The government will give him no assistance; accordingly, the whole of his crop must be conveyed on coolies' heads along an arduous path to the nearest highway, perhaps fifteen miles distant. Even this rough path of fifteen miles the planter must form at his own expense.
Considering the risks that are always attendant upon agricultural pursuits, and especially upon coffee-planting, the price of rough land must be acknowledged as absurdly high under the present conditions of sales. There is a great medium to be observed, however, in the sales of crown land; too low a price is even a greater evil than too high a rate, as it is apt to encourage speculators in land, who do much injury to a colony by locking up large tracts in an uncultivated state, to take the chance of a future rise in the price.
This evil might easily be avoided by retaining the present bona fide price of the land per acre, qualified by an arrangement that one-half of the purchase money should be expended