A tax of five per
cent. upon the produce of the land, to commence in the ratio of 0
per cent. for the first year, three per cent. for the second and
third, and the full amount of five for the fourth, would be a
fair and easy rent to the settler, and would not only repay the
government for the cost of repairing the tank, but would in a few
cars become a considerable source of revenue, in addition to the
increased value of the land, now worthless, by a system of
cultivation.
Should the first experiment succeed, the plan might be continued
throughout Ceylon, and the soil of her own shores would produce a
supply for the island consumption. The revenue would be derived
direct from the land which now produces nothing but thorny
jungle. The import trade of Ceylon would be increased in
proportion to the influx of population, and the duties upon
enlarged imports would again tend to swell the revenue of the
country.
The felling and clearing of the jungle, which cultivation would
render necessary, would tend, in a great measure, to dispel the
fevers and malaria always produced by a want of free circulation
of air. In a jungle-covered country like Ceylon, diseases of the
most malignant character are harbored in these dense and
undisturbed tracts, which year after year reap a pestilential
harvest from the thinly-scattered population. Cholera,
dysentery, fever and small-pox all appear in their turn and
annually sweep whole villages away. I have frequently hailed
with pleasure the distant tope of waving cocoa-nut trees after a
long day's journey in a broiling sun, when I have cantered toward
these shady warders of cultivation in hopes of a night's halt at
a village. But the palms have sighed in the wind over tenantless
abodes, and the mouldering dead have lain beneath their shade.
Not a living soul remaining; all swept away by pestilence; huts
recently fallen to decay, fruits ripening, on the trees, and no
hand left to gather them; the shaddock and the lime falling to
the earth to be preyed upon by the worm, like their former
masters. All dead; not one left to tell the miserable tale.
The decay of the population is still progressing, and the next
fifty years will see whole districts left uninhabited unless
something can be done to prevent it. There is little doubt that
if land and water could be obtained from government in a
comparatively healthy and populous neighborhood, many would
migrate to that point from the half-deserted districts, who might
assist in the cultivation of the country instead of rotting in a
closing jungle.
One season of pestilence, even in a large village, paves the road
for a similar visitation in the succeeding year, for this reason:
Say that a village comprising two hundred men is reduced by
sickness to a population of one hundred. The remaining one
hundred cannot keep in cultivation the land formerly open;
therefore, the jungle closes over the surface and rapidly
encroaches upon the village. Thus the circulation of air is
impeded and disease again halves the population. In each
successive year the wretched inhabitants are thinned out, and
disease becomes the more certain as the jungle 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.
