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.
