It Is Placed Beyond A Doubt That The Rice-Growing Resources Of Ceylon Have Been Suffered To Lie Dormant Since The Disappearance Of Her Ancient Population; And To These Neglected Capabilities The Attention Of Government Should Be Directed.

An experiment might be commenced on a small scale by the repair of one tank - say Kandellai, which is only twenty-six miles from Trincomalee on the highroad to Kandy.

This tank, when the dam and sluices were repaired, would rise to about nine feet above its present level, and would irrigate many thousand acres.

The grand desideratum in the improvement of Ceylon is the increase of the population; all of whom should, in some measure, be made to increase the revenue.

The government should therefore hazard this one experiment to induce the emigration of the industrious class of Chinese to the shores of Ceylon. Show them a never-failing supply of water and land of unlimited extent to be hid on easy terms, and the country would soon resume its original prosperity. 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.

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