When Ceylon was first acquired by the English, it was placed in the hands of the East India Company, being so intimately connected with India proper, of which that organization held control. In 1798, however, it became a possession of the English crown, and was confirmed to Great Britain by the Treaty of Amiens. The dominion of the Portuguese and the Dutch lasted for nearly the same length of time, each holding the island for about one hundred and forty years, both periods being characterized by innumerable conflicts with the natives and with foreign invaders. The Portuguese, and especially the Dutch, left lasting memorials of their occupancy in the form of fortifications, churches, stone dwellings, and the like, which were so well built as to be still serviceable.
The rich pearl fisheries, and the native product of choice, much coveted gems, were constant allurements for the possession of the "resplendent island," causing the surrounding powers to regard it as a vast treasure house, upon whose possessors they cast envious eyes. On taking the island, as already intimated, England adopted prompt and efficient measures to fortify her possession in such a manner that no one has since cared to dispute her claim. In such matters the English have always pursued an omnivorous policy. No spot of land seems too small or too insignificant to tempt their cupidity, and none too large for their capacious maw, – India, for example.
As in the instance of Malta, also under British rule for so many years, Ceylon has thriven and prospered wonderfully, that is to say in a commercial point of view, which after all is the conventional test. Would that the same commendation might apply to the moral and educational condition of the Singhalese! However, where peace and plenty, together with seeming content, prevail, let us not seek for hidden troubles. The island is to-day indisputably a most flourishing agricultural colony, self-supporting, except as regards the military establishment maintained by the home government, which expense is not justly chargeable to Ceylon, whose peaceable inhabitants require no military force to keep them in subjection. The simplest police organization accomplishes this, though in former times, under insufferable tyranny of petty princes and foreign invaders, the Singhalese proved that they could fight for, and hold their own against considerable odds. Unless outrageously oppressed, they are of too peaceable a nature to arouse themselves to open rebellion.
A simple glance at the situation shows great progress throughout the island since it came into the possession of Great Britain. Barbarous habits and institutions have been gradually reformed; taxes which were formerly exhaustive have been greatly modified, and in many instances entirely removed; from a condition of slavery, the masses have been made free, now enjoying entire personal liberty; the districts of the interior, heretofore inaccessible, have been open to easy and safe travel; compulsory labor has been abolished; education has been brought within the reach of all; large sections of territory have been drained, and brought from an unhealthy condition to one of comparative salubrity; mild and just laws are in operation; civil wars and foreign invasions have ceased, and a peaceful condition of every-day life is established. Such are some of the great improvements which have accrued under English rule. This statement is made as a simple matter of fact, not as an argument that England has a legitimate right on the island, any more than she has in India. But the prosperity of the Singhalese is no less a fact, and very pleasant to record.
The population of the island has more than doubled under the present dynasty, while its marketable products have quadrupled. A few pertinent facts occur to us in this connection which must surely interest the general reader.
There are now about three hundred miles of railway in operation on the island, and nearly as many more projected. To supplement this means of transportation there are a hundred and seventy-five miles of organized canal service, a legacy inherited from the Dutch. There are two hundred and fifty post-offices, besides forty telegraphic stations, in connection with which are sixteen hundred miles of telegraphic wire in position. In this march of progress the interests of education have not been entirely forgotten, and upon the whole, the Singhalese have very little to complain of as regards the government under which they live. Fate, however, has decreed that this people, as a nationality, shall gradually pass away and be forgotten, like other aboriginal races. The Alaska Indians are not more surely dying out than are these Singhalese. The most sensitive matter with them and with nearly all orientals is touching the sacredness of their religious rites. With these the English government never interferes, neither here nor in India proper. As we have shown, the orientals are a peaceable race, and will submit to a considerable degree of arbitrary rule touching their political relations, but the moment their religious convictions and ceremonies are interfered with, they become frenzied.
It will be remembered that the great Indian mutiny, which occurred in 1857, was at first incited in the ranks of the natives at Cawnpore and elsewhere by what was thought to be an intentional insult to their religious convictions.
The English, soon after establishing themselves in Ceylon, tried the experiment of forming a battalion of infantry, composed of the natives. When being trained to service, it was nearly impossible, we are told, to teach them not to fire away their ramrods as the real missiles of destruction. There is a certain effeminacy inherent in all rice-eating nations, and yet what did not the former people of this island achieve in the building of great cities, grand palaces, and temples of stone? It would almost seem as though the Singhalese of the present day could not belong to the same race as the people who built Anuradhapura before Christ was born.
Many of the prominent Christian sects have churches and missionary establishments in the island. It has long been a popular missionary field with several denominations, more particularly in the northern part. The most numerous is that of the Roman Catholic Church, whose leaders began their system of proselyting the natives as far back as the first establishment of the Portuguese in Ceylon. The faith which they presented addressed itself with all its theatrical effect to the fancy of the ignorant Singhalese, especially as the cunning priests took good care to mingle certain local Buddhistical ceremonies with those which they introduced. There are shrines and temples in Ceylon, in what are called Roman Catholic districts, where the images of Buddha and the Virgin Mary both hold honored places. Is the worship of one any more idolatrous than of the other? It has been well said that the idol is the measure of the worshiper. People who never thought for themselves were thus attracted. They formed a class whose very ignorance made them easy converts. Had they been able or inclined to reason upon the subject, it would not have been permitted. They had to swallow the creed as a whole, at a single gulp, being approached with the sword in one hand and the cross in the other.
Absolutism in faith is synonymous with ignorance. The right of inquiry is the privilege of every human being, though it is denounced as heretical by the Romish Church. Only falsehood fears investigation; only chicanery dreads the light. The hateful Inquisition tried to carry on its bloodthirsty practices here under Portuguese rule, but was summarily driven out of Ceylon by the Dutch, with its vile nunneries and its instruments of torture. So the French, during their brief possession of the island of Malta, expelled a similar Jesuitical crew from Valetta, not, however, before they had recorded their diabolical deeds in letters of blood, now burning a "heretic," and now mangling an intractable convert.
CHAPTER V
Food of the People. – Rice Cultivation. – Vast Artificial Lakes. – The Stone Tanks of Aden. – Parched Australia. – Coffee Culture. – Severe Reverses among Planters. – Tea Culture. – Cinchona Plantations. – Heavy Exportation of Tea. – Cacao Culture. – A Coffee Plantation described. – Domesticated Snakes. – The Cinnamon-Tree. – Cinnamon Gardens a Disappointment. – Picturesque Dwelling's. – Forest Lands. – The Ceylon Jungle. – Native Cabinet Woods. – Night in a Tropical Forest. – Rhododendrons.
The principal food of a nation is a most important factor, not only in judging of its means of support, but also as regards the mental and physical character of the people themselves. Rice has been the staple product and support of Ceylon, as it has been of the population of India and China, from time immemorial. There are to-day some eight hundred thousand acres of land devoted to the raising of this cereal upon the island; there should be twice that area devoted to the purpose, to meet the imperative wants of the present population. The unsuitability of the climate for ripening wheat is more than compensated for by its prodigal yield of rice, producing two crops annually, where water can be freely obtained. This grain is proven by scientific experiment to contain more of the several essential elements for support of the human body than any other which is grown. As is well known, in cultivating rice, it requires to be flooded, started in fact under water, after being first planted, and also to be more than once submerged during its growth and ripening. To facilitate the production of this nutritious grain, the great tanks already referred to were originally built, in which to preserve, for periodical use, the water which flows freely enough from the mountain region during the rainy season, but when the dry period sets in, the rivers become thread-like streams, fed only by a few inconsiderable springs which exist in the hills. The oldest of these immense reservoirs is believed to date back some centuries before Christ's appearance upon earth, evincing by their construction a degree of organized thrift and effective energy hardly equaled in our time.
The tanks not only saved the precious water from running to waste, but, being tapped at suitable intervals, conducted it by sluiceways and canals, distributing it to those localities where it was needed, and at the exact time when it was wanted.
The chief article of native consumption should also be one of export from a country so admirably adapted to its production. This is not now the case; indeed, it is and has long been one of the principal imports from India and elsewhere. It is estimated that every native adult who can get it consumes a bushel of rice each month in the year. To the Singhalese rice is what wheat is to the average American, namely, the staff of life. To promote its cultivation, the English government should repair the neglected tanks, great and small. There is evidence sufficient to prove that Ceylon raised all she required of this staple for home consumption when her agricultural masses could get the necessary water. In some localities where the rain is plentiful, the rice planter is dependent upon the natural supply; but in most parts of the island its cultivation is not even attempted unless a certain artificial supply of water is first secured by means of canals and reservoirs, it being quite as necessary as the very seed itself. There is one great advantage which the planters enjoy in Ceylon over most other regions; that is, the abundance and cheapness of free labor obtainable at any season of the year. Coolies by the thousand are always ready to come hither from southern India at the harvest time. As many come regularly as can get employment.
When the island was at the height of its prosperity, there were in its various parts at least thirty tanks of enormous proportions, and about seven hundred of all sizes. In the nineteenth century, we attain the object of water preserves by building structures of granite, like the Croton and Cochituate reservoirs of New York and Boston, not nearly so large nor any more efficient than these of the time referred to. But to do this we have all the appliances of powerful machinery and labor-saving methods, while these Herculean results in Ceylon were achieved by human hands alone. One system is the consummation of a high state of civilization, and of well-paid skillful industry; the other, like the enduring pyramids, was the outcome of a barbaric period, and of forced manual labor. While examining one of the vast embankments, built, like all others, partly of stone but mainly of earth, to securely hold the artificial lake, the author was accompanied by an intelligent native, who was a local official of the government. It was natural to remark upon the achievement of so great a work by primitive means. "Yes," said he, "every bushel of earth which forms this broad embankment, extending for miles, was brought by the single basketful from yonder mountain upon the heads of men and women."
The remains of one of these capacious tanks which stimulated industry and insured abundant crops in Ceylon so long ago is to be seen at Kalawewa, near Dambula, already spoken of, and is known to have been built fourteen centuries since. It was originally some forty miles in circumference, covering seven square miles, with a depth of twenty feet of water, and having an embankment of stone twelve miles long laid in solid tiers, with the large blocks ingeniously secured together. These tanks are found in a more or less ruinous condition all over the island, but especially at the north, where they were more required than in the southern portion. The conserving of water in large quantities for agricultural and other necessary purposes was naturally one of the earliest developed ideas of civilized people. Aden, the important peninsula commanding the entrance of the Red Sea, now held and fortified by England, is situated in a rainless zone, so that the inhabitants see no fall of that invaluable element sometimes for two years together, though when it does visit them it comes in floods. The dependence here for the needed supply in the dry season is upon enormous tanks hewn out of the solid rocks with infinite labor, and connected with each other by a well-devised system. These tanks, being cut in the solid rock, as we have said, are virtually indestructible, and form the means of supply for the inhabitants to-day, as they did thousands of years ago. The great antiquity of the Aden water reservoirs renders them intensely interesting, since they are believed to be as old as the most ancient monuments in existence raised by the hand of man, – not excepting those of Egypt.
In entering the harbor of Aden, one passes through the dangerous Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, so called by the Arabs, and signifying the "Gate of Tears," because it has proved so fatal to human life and to commerce. The author well remembers, when passing this famous point, seeing the tall masts of a big European steamship still standing above the water of the strait. A few days previously, the vessel had been swept by the treacherous currents upon some of the many sunken rocks, and had instantly gone to the bottom with all her crew on board.
The water preserves of Ceylon are of all sizes, from widespread lakes to mere ponds, designed to irrigate circumscribed districts. There was a time when each town and village, at least all that lay to the north of the mountain range which divides the island, had its reservoir. The first one spoken of in this chapter was built by King Penduwasa, and was restored by the English so late as 1867. It covers an area of over three thousand acres, and is of inestimable value to the agricultural interests of the district. It seems that as Egyptian monarchs were wont to build pyramids to mark the glory of their several dynasties, so the Kandian kings and earlier rulers of Ceylon each sought to excel his predecessor by constructing larger tanks, thus elaborating the means of irrigation and increasing the productiveness of the island. Sixteen of these useful reservoirs are credited to one of the latest kings of Kandy.
Could this grand and effective principle of irrigation be applied to the plains of Australia, what a blessing it might prove. The oft-recurring periods of drought, extending from Brisbane in the north to Adelaide in the south, are now a fatal blight to agricultural enterprise. The Murray River, which at certain seasons of the year is navigable for nearly or quite one thousand miles, now runs to waste, becoming a mere brook half the year; and sheep and cattle sometimes die of thirst by thousands, so that many wealthy Englishmen engaged in sheep-raising have been made paupers in a single season. It only needs the construction of a series of water-saving tanks upon the course of the Murray to successfully water millions of acres of naturally fertile soil, and to insure the country against anything like a water famine when the dry season sets in. Why the people who are in authority ignore such simple facts is a standing marvel.
We have said that rice was the staple product of the island, and it is still so; but it was not long ago that Ceylon was also famous for the amount of excellent coffee which it produced and exported. For a while, it seemed destined to rival all the rest of the world in this important article. Its cultivation was begun here upon a large scale in 1825, in the vicinity of Peradenia, where the soil and climate proved to be so favorable that speculators came hither in large numbers from great distances, but especially from England, to establish plantations, though the coffee-tree is not indigenous to Ceylon. Thousands of acres of forest and dense jungle were cleared and burned over in the neighborhood of Kandy alone, at great expense and labor, to prepare the ground for coffee planting. There was at one time so much speculative energy evinced in this direction that nearly every local government official was more or less engaged in it, embarking therein all the money which he possessed or which he could borrow. Well-engineered roads were opened into new and available districts, while numerous substantial bridges were erected over previously impassable streams, and thriving villages sprang up as if by magic amid what was formerly wild and inaccessible jungle. In the course of twenty years, the product had risen to so large an aggregate figure as to astonish the commercial world, and the price of the berry was consequently reduced in all the markets of Europe. Such good fortune, it was finally discovered, was not destined to fall unalloyed to the share of the Ceylon planters.
Some sacrifice must attend upon all such enterprises. In clearing the forest lands for coffee planting, a most reckless waste was practiced in Ceylon. Magnificent groves of valuable wood were cut down and ruthlessly burned to ashes, among which were many of the precious cabinet woods so highly prized all over the world. Among others were some grand banian-trees, as we were told, which had a hundred great stems and a thousand lesser ones. There are not many such trees as these to be found in the known world.
It is but a few years since that a nearly simultaneous blight attacked most of the coffee plantations on the island, coming in the form of a strange fungus, which choked the breathing pores of the leaves, and thus rapidly exhausted the trees. The Ceylon planters were struck with consternation for a period; years of uninterrupted good crops had filled them with confidence, so they had annually, by liberal expenditure, cleared more ground, spreading out their plantations in all directions. Large sums of money were sent out from England by individuals desirous to enter into so promising a speculation, and the aggregate sum said to have been expended in this purpose is almost incredible. But the blight proved to be of the most serious character, and was so wholesale as to literally impoverish many previously rich agriculturists who had embarked their all in the business. The island is very rich in fungi, and this one which had so effectually blighted the coffee plants was quite new to science. That which was for a time so serious a pecuniary loss to this island proved to be of great commercial advantage to Java and Brazil, whose production in the same line was vastly stimulated thereby, while the coffee which they sent to market realized more remunerative prices than when brought in competition with that of Ceylon. Since this experience, a large number of the planters have gradually turned their attention to raising tea, together with the production of quinine from the cinchona-tree, and so far as could be learned, they have met with good pecuniary success. An intelligent resident of Colombo estimates that there are fifty thousand acres of the last-named tree under profitable cultivation at the present time. It is found that cinchona will thrive in the mountain districts, considerably above the height at which coffee ceases to be advantageously cultivated, while, unlike tea or coffee, it requires no special care after it has been once fairly started. The production of quinine, which has now reached mammoth proportions, hardly keeps pace with the growing consumption of the drug by the world at large. There was over one million dollars' worth of cinchona bark exported in 1892 from Colombo.
The export of tea in 1890 rose to the considerable amount of forty-seven million pounds, which aggregate we have evidence to show has been since increased annually. The commercial importance of Ceylon may be said to rest at the present time mainly upon the raising of tea. The yield per acre is considerably larger than it is in India, while the access to market is much better than it is at Assam or Cachar. The Ceylon product is shipped in its natural condition, that is to say, it is pure, while that of China and Japan is systematically adulterated and artificially colored. There are about two thousand plantations upon the island occupied for tea raising, averaging two hundred acres each of rolling upland, and it is confidently believed here that China and India will eventually be distanced by Ceylon in the matter of supplying the markets of the world with tea. While coffee cannot be cultivated successfully much higher than four thousand feet above sea level in this island, tea thrives at almost any height in this latitude, as it does in northern India, round about Darjeeling. The only fear seems now to be that of over-production. The last year's crop was estimated to slightly exceed eighty million pounds, and its quality was so satisfactory as to command good prices and a quick market.
There are several special advantages which tea culture possesses over that of coffee; one is the ease with which the tea planter can get rid of any pest which attacks his trees. The coffee plant gives, as a rule, but one crop annually, the blossom season being narrowed to four or five weeks, and if that fails because of bugs or disease of any sort, the year's labor is in vain. In the cultivation of tea, there is the chance of plucking leaves nearly every month of the year. If an emergency arises, the planter has only to clear his bushes of every leaf and, gathering the same, burn them. The insects are thus totally destroyed, while the bushes are sure to produce a new covering of verdure in a few weeks. There are to-day nearly three hundred thousand acres devoted to tea culture in Ceylon.
The planters have been giving attention of late years to the raising of cacao, the chocolate plant, and some large plantations have proved to be very profitable, the demand being considerably beyond the present supply. The article produced here stands as the best in the London market, and commands the highest price. Over twenty thousand hundredweight were exported from Colombo in 1892. That of the year just past, we were assured, would show a considerable increase over this amount.
Let it not be understood that coffee is no longer raised on the island. The fact is that the blight spoken of seems to have in a considerable degree exhausted itself, and many coffee planters are again rejoicing over paying crops, as abundantly proven by the amount of the berry which is still exported. It may be almost doubted if there is any such thing as unmitigated evil; the brief though serious blight of the coffee plant in Ceylon has proved to be a blessing in disguise. Finite judgment is often delusive. Joseph's brethren, who sold him into slavery, meant it unto evil, but God meant it unto good. The equity of Providence has framed a never-failing law of compensation, though we may not always possess sufficient intelligence to see its application.
A coffee plantation is a charming sight at each stage of the ripening process. Its dark green polished leaves are beautiful examples of tropical foliage, and the white blossoms look like snowflakes gathered in clusters about the tips of the branches, emitting a perfume not so pronounced as, and yet not unlike, that of the tuberose. These odorous flowers are short-lived and drop to the ground almost as quickly as they come, being followed in due course by large crimson berries, quite as ornamental as the flowers and nearly as large as the common New England cherry. Within the pulp the double seeds are ripened which form the coffee berry of commerce. The view of a thrifty plantation at sunrise, when each spray is dripping with refreshing dew and every little branch is diamond-capped, is lovely beyond expression.
A surprise awaited us on one occasion while visiting a coffee plantation near Kandy. Seeing a snake over four feet in length moving along unmolested on the path in front of the bungalow which was occupied by the planter's family, it was quite impossible to suppress an exclamation. Our host smiled pleasantly as he explained that the creature was not only tolerated about the house, but that it was a pet! It seems that these reptiles are often kept to kill and drive away the coffee-rats, as they are called, a certain species of rodents which are often alarmingly abundant on these estates, and terribly destructive to the growing crops. They are twice the size of an ordinary rat, such as is common with us. They feed upon birds, blossoms, and ripe berries of the coffee to an unlimited extent, if not interfered with. The snake is their natural enemy, and is more destructive among them than a well-trained domestic cat would be. In fact, these rats would be more than a match for an ordinary cat. So the fer-de-lance is a great rat destroyer among the sugar plantations of Martinique, a snake which is as poisonous as the cobra of Ceylon. Does the reader remember that it was one of this species of West Indian serpents which bit Josephine, the future empress of France, when she was a mere child in her island home, and that her faithful negro nurse saved the child's life by instantly drawing the poison from the wound with her own lips? At Pará, in Brazil, the author has seen young anacondas six and eight feet long also kept upon the plantations as rat catchers. Any of these serpents make very little of swallowing a rat which they have themselves caught, but they promptly refuse such as have been killed by a trap or other means. The Ceylon cobra cannot cope with the mongoose, whose safety in a conflict with this reptile lies in its extraordinary activity. The mongoose avoids the dash of the cobra and pins it by the back of the neck, persistently maintaining its hold there, in spite of the creature's contortions, until it succeeds in gnawing through and severing the spine.
In Ceylon, ladies sometimes make a pet of the mongoose, and when taken young and reared for this purpose, the soft little hairy creature becomes as affectionate and lap-loving as the most tiny dog, recognizing its mistress above all other persons, and following close upon her footsteps. It looks innocent enough, but the cobra instinctively dreads its presence, and with good reason, for the encounter nine times in ten costs the reptile its life. The natives say that when a continuous fight occurs between these creatures, if the snake succeeds in fixing its fangs in the body of the mongoose, the latter instantly retires and eats of some plant as a preventive to the operation of the poison, and presently returns to renew the conflict until it finally conquers. Though this is a universally believed statement among the common people, we do not give it the least credit.
One other important and staple product of the island should not be forgotten. The cinnamon-tree is indigenous, and is largely cultivated for the valuable bark which it yields. It is estimated that over twenty thousand acres are systematically improved in the raising of cinnamon-trees, a very ancient as well as profitable industry in Ceylon, and one which was held as a monopoly by the Dutch government for a century and more. The monopoly was also maintained by the English, after they assumed control here, but this most unwarrantable embargo has long since been abolished, and it is no longer a restricted article. The tree is grown from the seed, begins to yield at about its eighth year, and continues to do so for a century or more. It does not require a rich soil, but thrives best in a low, sandy plain. A soil in which scarcely anything else will grow except chance weeds seems quite the thing for cinnamon, which, like the cocoanut palm, thrives best near the salt water. In its natural state, it grows to a height of thirty feet; under cultivation, it is pruned down so as to remain at about ten feet or less. It is of the laurel family, but is as hardy as the long-lived olive-tree. The author has seen in southern Spain, near Malaga, orchards of the latter in which were many trees which it was declared were several centuries old, their gnarled and scraggy appearance certainly favoring the statement.