Chapter III: Part 3

We must first make a brief survey with the map. The island 39
is in the form of a rough oval, a little over thirty miles
long, less than half the size of the county of Kent. Its coasts
are fringed with coral reefs, broken here and there by gaps,
especially where the streams of fresh water enter the sea.
Behind these gaps are the seaports, of which only two are of any
size, Grand Port or Mahébourg at the southeast corner, and Port
Louis, the capital, in the northwest. Grand Port was occupied
first, but it is open to the Southeast Trades; so that Port 40
Louis, like Zanzibar, on the sheltered side, and with a good
harbour, has become the chief port for the whole island. In the
north and part of the east and the southeast corner the land lies
fairly low; here we find the chief towns, the plantations and
most of the population. A great deal of the centre and south is
filled up with hills and plateaux; some of the peaks rising to
over two thousand feet. Here are the Moka Mountains, behind 41
Port Louis, steep and rugged, crowned by a strange peak, 42
Pieterboth Head, which is a useful landmark for sailors. Notice
the Dutch name. In the southwest the hills are very near to the
sea; the coast plain is narrow, the slopes are steep and the
rivers come down in rapids and falls amidst wild and beautiful
scenery. Here is the Chamarel fall and here again are the falls 43
on the Savanne River. The railways are a fair guide to the 44
structure of the country, as they keep for the most part to
the lowland or the river valleys, except where the main line
from Port Louis to Mahébourg is forced to surmount the middle
of the plateau; while the Moka branch crosses a steep ridge on
its way to the lower country to the east. Here we see one of the
curious trains crossing one of the mountain streams at the foot 45
of the bare hill slopes; the picture gives a good idea of the
scenery on the railway.

The rainfall in Mauritius is heavy in the summer months,
December to March, especially on the east side of the hills,
where the wind comes straight in from the warm ocean; and the
temperature is high, at sea level, as Mauritius lies on the edge
of the Tropics. Heat and rain, together with a rich volcanic
soil, have made Mauritius what it is to-day. Agriculture is the
only occupation of the people, and the only important crop
is the sugar-cane. This was first introduced from the East
India Islands by the Dutch, though little progress was made
with its cultivation until the time of the French settlement.
The forest which then covered the island was cleared away, and
the cultivation of the cane, by means of slave labour on large
plantations, became the staple industry of the new colonists.
Large fortunes were made in the early part of the nineteenth
century, but Mauritius, like the West Indies, has suffered
greatly from the competition of beet-sugar, and its trade has
declined greatly, though it has still a good market in India. Too
much dependence on a single product has brought ruin on many of
the planters. Here is a picture of one of these large sugar 46
estates. In front of us we see the cane growing and the planter
looking over his crops; the ugly building, with the chimney,
which spoils the middle of the picture, is the mill where the
cane is crushed to extract the juice.

The cultivation of sugar in Mauritius, like that of tea in
Ceylon, has produced remarkable changes in the character of the
people. When slavery was abolished, in 1835, new sources of
labour for the plantations had to be found, and Indian coolies
were imported on a large scale. These usually remained when the
term of their contract was over; with the result that at the
present time about three-quarters of the total population of the
island is of Indian descent, the majority having been born in
the island. We find them everywhere in the island, living 47
contentedly in primitive huts and cultivating their small patches
of land. They are steadily acquiring the land in small plots and
manage to exist comfortably even under present conditions. In
short, Mauritius is becoming more and more an offshoot of India,
since not only the labour but much of the food supply must come
from the rice fields of India, so long as nearly all the land
under cultivation is given up to a single crop like sugar.
The climate, too, is more suitable to the brown than to the
white people; malarial fever is always present, and the general
conditions have not been improved by the cutting down of the
greater part of the forest. Sometimes the weather brings disaster
in a swift and sudden form, as Mauritius lies in the track of
the cyclones which whirl in from the northeast, especially in
March and April, and travel southwards towards Madagascar. In a
few hours one of these terrible storms can destroy houses and
plantations and undo the work of years. One of the worst of
these, in recent years, struck the island in 1892; and here we
see some of the damage done at Port Louis. The planter in 48
this beautiful island has truly many difficulties to contend
with. It is possible that the growth of trade in Madagascar and
on the neighbouring coasts of Africa may bring back a little of
its past prosperity to Port Louis; but Mauritius can never regain
the position which it enjoyed before the piercing of the Suez
Canal.

If we look at the map showing the depths of the Indian Ocean, (28)
we notice that Mauritius, with the sister French island of
Réunion, rests on a relatively shallow bank, raised above the
ocean floor. Following this bank northwards for nearly a thousand
miles, we come to a whole group of little islands which are
connected by a similar bank with Madagascar. The most northerly
of this group are the Seychelles. Another great bank runs
southward from India with scores of islets on it. In the north
are the Laccadives, close to the coast of India; in the middle
are the Maldives; and in the far south, beyond the Equator, right
out in the ocean, is the little Chagos Archipelago, including the
coral island of Diego Garcia, where at one time there was a small
coaling station used by vessels bound to Australia. All these
islands are but the fragments of a sunken land-mass which at a
very early period of the worlds history joined South Africa to
India. They are widely separated if we look only at the surface
of the sea, but really joined together if we look below.

Mahé, the largest of the Seychelles, has an area of rather over
fifty square miles, a little more than that of the island of
Jersey; we could walk from end to end of it in a few hours. A
map, showing Zanzibar, Pemba, Mauritius and the Seychelles 49
on the same scale, may perhaps help us to realize their relative
size and shape. There is one good harbour in Mahé, on which
stands Victoria, the capital, where steamers sometimes call
on the voyage from Aden to Mauritius or from India to Mombasa. 50
Here is a general view of the harbour and here is a street 51
in the little town. The whole group was dependent on
Mauritius and was given up to us at the same time as that
island. The language of the people is still modified French.
The Seychelles are fertile and beautiful and not unhealthy, in
spite of their nearness to the Equator. They naturally abound
in tropical plants, among which the coconut palm is the most
valuable to the natives. Here are some of these palms with 52
the mill where the oil is extracted from the nut. Here also 53
we see a species of fan palm, which has a strange history.
Centuries ago, the Portuguese found washed up in the Maldives
and on the southwest coasts of India a curious double nut, the
_coco-de-mer_. The tree which produced the nut was unknown 54
and could not be discovered in the neighbouring islands, so the
fable was invented that it grew in the depths of the sea. The nut
was much valued in India as a medicine, but in spite of careful
search not until the end of the eighteenth century was the parent
tree found in the Seychelles, where alone it grows. The Southwest
Monsoon, blowing for months at a time, carried the nut all the
way to India, just as it brought the fleets of Arab dhows from
the coast of Africa. So we have in this tale of the nut a useful
reminder of the climate of the Indian Ocean. We will now leave
the Seychelles after a glance at another strange product of a
neighbouring island, Aldabra. This is the giant tortoise. It 55
was at one time very common in this part of the Indian Ocean, as
we learn from the accounts of early voyagers, but it is now rare.

Mauritius and the Seychelles, with many of the smaller groups
and islands in the Indian Ocean, came into our hands in
connexion with the development of the old route to India by way
of the Cape. There is one group, among the nearest to India,
which through all the changes of Portuguese, Dutch and British
occupation has succeeded in maintaining a partial independence.
The northernmost of the Maldive islands are only about four
hundred miles from the coast of Ceylon, within easy reach not
only of the road from Africa and the Seychelles to India, but
also of the more important road from Arabia, the Red Sea and
the Persian Gulf to the Malay Archipelago and the Far East.
The language of the people, as we might expect from the near
neighbourhood of Ceylon, is closely akin to old-fashioned
Sinhalese. We may perhaps regard the people as colonists from
Ceylon, with a large mixed element due to the Arab traders
who must have visited the islands often in their voyages. The
Maldives have always followed the fortunes of Ceylon; they have
recognized in turn Portuguese, Dutch and British authority, but
have succeeded in avoiding complete annexation. This may be
due partly to the fact that there is little in them to attract
invaders. The islands which make up the group are mere coral
atolls, with no good harbours, a very small supply of good water,
and few products for trade. The Maldive trading fleet, which 56
we see here, does not suggest a very heavy traffic. What there
is, mostly dried fish, finds its only market in Ceylon, which
sends, among other things, fresh drinking water in return. 57
The Sultan is on good terms with our officials: here we see him,
with his suite, visiting a British warship, and here he is 58
receiving the return call of the representative of the Governor
of Ceylon. The connexion with Ceylon is formally recognized once
a year, when a solemn embassy comes from Malé, the chief island
of the group, to Colombo, to greet the representative of the
Suzerain Power. So we conclude with this embassy, which has 59
finally landed us in Ceylon.

In our voyage from the Gulf of Aden to Colombo we have made a
great circuit of the Indian Ocean, yet from beginning to end we
have never lost touch with Indian trade and Indian people. The
islands and ports which we have visited are only to be understood
as parts of a larger whole, united not divided by the sea. We
speak rightly of the Indian Ocean, since India is and always
has been the central fact in the life of this region, both
politically and economically. This was as true in the earliest
days of the Arab traders as it is to-day. We have replaced
sails by steam, cut the Suez Canal, and changed the direction
of the main ocean route; but as soon as we pass the Strait of
Bab-el-Mandeb, we find that our route is only one of many. We are
in a network of traffic and intercourse which was in existence
centuries ago, long before the first European keel broke into the
eastern seas.

LECTURE IV

CEYLON

Ceylon, which takes the first place among our Crown Colonies,
is the halfway house on our long journey. As we steam towards
Colombo there is little to suggest that we are nearing one of
the chief harbours in the eastern world. We see a long unbroken
line of coast, fringed with green coconut palms, with no trace
of bay or inlet. In the background rises an irregular hill mass,
topped with long ridges and sharp peaks. Presently we can 1
distinguish two great breakwaters, with a wide opening between.
The southwest wind is blowing and huge waves are dashing over
them, throwing up masses of foam as high as the masts of the
vessels which lie inside in a great basin, calm as a lake, a
mile and a half long and over half a mile wide. Here is a safe
anchorage for a fleet, with coaling jetties and a dry dock 2
which can take the largest vessel afloat.

Like so many modern seaports Colombo owes everything to
engineering. Forty years ago the roadstead was open to the swell
from the southwest, except for the shelter of the little headland
from which the main breakwater now juts out. In those days our
vessel would have called at Galle, a hundred miles away at the
southern corner of the island. We can journey to Galle now by
railway along the coast, through interminable groves of coconut 3
palms, with glimpses of the sea breaking on the coral reefs
on our right and Adam’s peak rising into the clouds on our
left. Galle was in early times the chief port of the island,
the meeting point of Arab traders from the west and Chinese
from the east; it is a picturesque, old-world town, with many
relics of the Dutch occupation; but Colombo has now taken its
place as the commercial centre. Here is a view of the Galle 4
lighthouse, taken from the walls of the old Dutch fortifications;
the building behind the palms is a new Mohammedan mosque. In a
quiet corner we see native fishing boats, with more palms in 5
the background. Here again is a Hindu temple, dating from the 6
time of the Dutch occupation; the lions over the gate may perhaps
have been copied from some European coat-of-arms, as they look
rather different from the usual native devices.

Far away in the northeast is Trincomali, a vast landlocked 7
bay, with unlimited deep and safe anchorage, the only good
natural harbour in the island, in fact one of the best natural
harbours in the whole world. Here was for many years the
headquarters of the Navy in Indian waters; but it is out of the
track of steamers and away from the capital, so that it has
now been dismantled by the Admiralty. The Navy has followed to
Colombo the commerce which depends on it for protection, and
Trincomali, in spite of its great natural advantages, has sunk
back to the position of a third-rate local port.

Before we start on our tour let us study the map and form some 8
idea of the shape and nature of the land which we are about
to visit. Ceylon hangs like a pearl, as the eastern poets say,
from the end of India, to which it is nearly joined by the chain
of small islands and reefs which lie between the Gulf of Manaar
and Palk Strait. So shallow is the passage that large steamers
do not venture through, and proposals have already been made for
carrying a railway across. Ceylon is almost as large as Ireland;
the whole of the north is flat, and a belt of lowland forty to
fifty miles wide runs all round the east and south coasts. In the
southwest the belt narrows, between the sea and the foothills
of the block of highland which fills up much of the interior.
This block is an irregular plateau-like country, crossed by
ridges from northwest to southeast, cut into by deep gorges and
crowned by sharp peaks, many of which rise over six thousand
feet. The rivers are short and swift, except where they traverse
the broader lowlands of the north and northeast. The southwest
corner, with its highlands and coast strip and its entrance at
Colombo, is the real Ceylon of to-day; though in former times the
coast and the interior had each a distinct and separate life and
history.

The whole island is represented in the crowd, bewildering in its
variety of face and dress, which greets us on our landing 9
in Colombo. Here is a typical Sinhalese, wearing the _comboy_,
a wide length of cloth, of white or striped cotton, which is
wrapped round the lower half of the body; his long hair is done
up in a knot behind and ornamented with a tortoiseshell comb,
which gives a strange appearance to his head. We see this comb,
in its most elaborate form, in the portrait of a high-caste 10
Sinhalese; and we notice that, except for the comb, he wears 11
ordinary European dress. Here again is a native in the street
wearing a shawl round his shoulders, and yet another with a neat
drill jacket; the latter is probably in the service of Europeans.
The building behind them is a native theatre, roofed over with
green palm leaves. Finally, we have a picture of a typical 12
Sinhalese girl of the lower class.

Then we come on a group of dark-brown men wearing loincloths
and turbans and repairing the roadway with pick and shovel; 13
these are Tamil coolies from Southern India, doing the heavy
work of the town. Another trots in the shafts of a ricksha, 14
the carriage of the East, which we shall meet again. As we go
further into the town, we meet natives from the country districts
on their way to market in two-wheeled carts, thatched with 15
leaves of the coconut palm and drawn by little humped
bullocks. They wear the _comboy_ and little else, as they are
less influenced by foreign ideas than the people of the town.
Let us follow them into the _Pettah_, or native quarter, 16
with its trams and rickshas and busy shops. Here we see the carts
collected in the open market place, and in the streets we 17
notice a new type of men; these are Moormen or Mohammedans, who
carry on much of the business of the town. Some of them wear the
fez, which we see at times even in our own country; others, more
old-fashioned, wear strange-looking hats shaped like a beehive.
On our way back we pass a Hindu temple, which reminds us 18
again that India, its people and its creeds are close at hand.

The Europeans are almost as varied as the natives. Some are
English, officials or planters; others are Dutch by race; while
there are also a great number of half-caste descendants of the
original Portuguese settlers. Many of the half-castes bear
Portuguese names and imitate European dress and manners.

We can easily see something of the habits of the poorer classes
since they live largely in the public view. Their houses are
wattled huts of mud and bamboo, thatched with leaves or roofed
with red tiles, and open to the street except at night when they
are boarded up carefully, as the Sinhalese are not fond of the
night air. We may perhaps see a family occupied with the morning
toilet, in front of the house; and here in a corner of the lake
are the _dhobies_ or native washermen at work. The lake is 19
one of the most beautiful sights of the town; it is really one of
the lagoons which we find all round the coast, where the mouth of
a stream has silted up. The Dutch, following their home customs,
utilized these lagoons and developed a system of canals along the
low coastline. Part of the system is still in use, and we can
travel by small steamer from Colombo northward to Negombo. 20
Here is a scene on the canal. The Dutch have also left traces of
their rule in scattered fortifications and in the Roman-Dutch
law which is still the basis of the legal administration in the
island. Many of the lawyers in the local courts are of Dutch
descent.

The Dutch had ample time to leave their mark on Ceylon, as they
held it from the middle of the seventeenth century, when they
wrested it from the Portuguese, until the end of the eighteenth,
when it was handed over to Great Britain at the time when
Holland was subject to France. The Dutch traders were attracted
to Colombo and the southwest coast by the cinnamon which grew
there; the bark of the cinnamon was the most valuable product
of Ceylon and almost the only export, apart from elephants,
until well into the nineteenth century. The cinnamon trade was
a strict government monopoly, enforced by harsh penal laws, and
the monopoly remained, even under English rule, until 1832. One
other interesting trace of Dutch rule survives in the many miles
of palm groves, planted by forced native labour, which we have
already noticed along the coast from Colombo to Galle.

For a century and a half before the Dutch occupation the island
was under the power of Portugal. The wars of the Dutch were
undertaken to advance their trade; but the Portuguese fought
for the idea of Empire, and one of their chief aims was the
conversion of the conquered races to Christianity. The effect
of Portuguese rule still survives in the coast districts where
Portuguese names are common, in the mixed race and the local
corrupt Portuguese dialect, and above all in the thousands of
natives professing the Roman Catholic religion. The word Don,
formerly a Portuguese title, is still in use among the natives as
a personal name, and many even of the pure Sinhalese have adopted
high-sounding Portuguese names.

Neither the Dutch nor the Portuguese succeeded in subduing the
highlands of the interior; their occupation and interests were
limited to the coast strip. It was left to England, in the
nineteenth century, to penetrate inland and build roads and
bring the whole of the island under a single control. We now
leave Colombo, and travel by train to visit the highlands and
the old capital at Kandy, where we shall learn something of the
up-country Sinhalese, who differ considerably from those of the
sea-coast. The line is built on a broad gauge and the train has
a comfortable restaurant car attached as in England. At the
start, we run through mile after mile of padi fields. The native
agriculture is simple: first the muddy earth is scratched with
a primitive plough, drawn by water buffaloes, which are used 21
in the fields as the wet mud does them no harm; the crop is
sown with many strange ceremonies, and a little later the water
impounded from the streams is allowed to flow over the young
plants; later still the land is again drained dry and the ripened
grain is reaped by hand. The Sinhalese are agriculturalists and
nothing else; working on their own land is among them the most
honourable pursuit, though they are not as ready to work for
others. They brought with them from their original home in Bengal
their national taste for rice, and kept to their former habits,
although much of Ceylon is not well fitted for its cultivation,
and great irrigation works were necessary to provide the water.
Even on the hillsides we still see the padi grown by means of
terraces. On the ridges between the padi fields are groves of
coconut palms; and here and there we come on a native village 22
or house, like the one in front of us, always with its little
group of palms and other trees, growing without attention
and providing for most of the simple wants of the villager.
The leaves provide thatch for his hut, unless he is wealthy
enough to use red tiles, and are woven into mats or baskets; the
stalks make fences, while the trunks give beams and troughs and
furniture. From the sap he makes sugar and spirits: the husk of
the nut gives fibre for rope: the shell makes drinking bowls and
spoons; while the kernel can be eaten, or dried as copra and
then pressed for the oil, which is exported to Europe. We have
already seen this in the Seychelles. It is hardly surprising that
where Nature supplies so much without effort on his part, the
Sinhalese is not according to our ideas industrious. To him the
coconut palm is a necessary part of his existence, and he well
expresses this in the saying that the tree will not grow out of
sound of the human voice. But the coconut palm has another aspect
in Ceylon. The Sinhalese gentry have discovered its commercial
value, and in various parts of the island, especially round
Negombo and Batticaloa, there are large estates where the nut is
grown on the plantation system for export. There is already a
larger area under the coconut palm in this form than under tea,
and the coconut as a commercial product increases steadily in
importance. It is interesting to note that it is the wealthier
natives and not the foreign planters who are mainly responsible
for the development of this profitable business. In the northern
part of the island we find another species of palm tree, the 23
palmyra. This palm is almost as important to the Tamils who
inhabit the district as the coconut is to the Sinhalese further
south.

_Copyright._) (_See page 65._

KANDY.]

_Copyright._) (_See page 74._

ELEPHANTS BATHING.]

_Copyright._) (_See page 61._

MARKET IN THE PETTAH.]

As we approach Kandy the scenery grows wilder and the hills
steeper, and we may perhaps catch sight of a different kind
of cultivation. Long rows of low bushy plants are growing in
the fields, and scores of dark brown natives, men, women
and children, are picking the leaves. We are entering the 24
tea-planting district. In the distance is the planter’s house
and near it the sheds where the leaf is dried and packed for 25
the market.

Here and there, in this part of our journey, we may notice
stretches of desolate scrub breaking up the forest area. A
century ago there was a continuous belt of forest between Kandy
and the lowlands, jealously preserved by the native kings as a
barrier against the invader; now only patches of this remain. The
native has a method of cultivation styled _chena_: this consists
in burning a piece of the forest, cultivating it for a year or
two and then moving on to a new patch. The trees do not grow
again, but a low scrub springs up, useless for any purpose. When
the Government interfered with this wasteful practice the damage
was past repair.

We now reach Kandy, a beautiful old-world town, set in the
forest high up among the hills, and full of relics of past 26
history. Here we see it, looking across the artificial lake on
which it stands; and here is one of its streets. The people 27
in this district are old-fashioned and little touched by foreign
influence. They still retain many of the old feudal ideas.
Here we have a group of chiefs, in the picturesque native 28
dress, though the effect is rather spoilt by the clothes of the
Europeans; and here is a portrait of a chief showing his 29
dress of ceremony with its elaborate ornaments. These dignified
chiefs are very different from the native as we saw him at
Colombo. All round us are ruins of temples and public buildings,
often half buried in the jungle; but we can still see the 30
Audience Hall of the old kings of Kandy, with its carved wooden
pillars. It is now used as a modern Court of Justice.

The Kandyans have a long and notable history behind them. Two
thousand five hundred years ago, according to native tradition,
a prince from the Ganges Valley reached Ceylon and established
himself as king. The invaders were tillers of the soil, and
their rulers have left monuments of their energy in the many
ruins of irrigation tanks dotted about the dry northern part of
the island. They were not for long left undisturbed in their
conquest. From time to time the land was raided by the people
of Southern India, and the history of the kingdoms of Ceylon
is largely a series of wars. We can trace the gradual progress
of the later invaders in the removal of the Sinhalese capital
further and further south; first, from the coast to Anuradhapura,
then to Polonnaruwa, and so on to Kandy, and finally to Cotta,
now a suburb of Colombo. As the result of this movement, the
southwest district is to-day occupied mainly by Sinhalese, who
form two-thirds of the native population, while the northern part
is peopled by Tamils who belong in language, race and religion
to Southern India. The Chinese, who for many centuries traded
with Ceylon and at one time conquered it and carried away the
reigning king, have left no traces; not so the Arab traders of
the West. Their Mohammedan descendants still form a large part
of the population on the coast, especially on the east side,
and throughout the island they are the shopmen and traders in
nearly every village. So we have Tamils in the north. Sinhalese
in the south and Moormen everywhere; and all mingled together
with Europeans, Burghers and half-castes in the coast ports and
Colombo. There is one other race which we must not forget. In the
jungle of the wild Eastern Province are to be found the Veddas,
the dying remnant of the people who occupied Ceylon before the
coming of the Sinhalese. There are less than four thousand of
these curious people in the island and their number is dwindling
steadily. Not all are equally backward. Some of them practise a
rude form of agriculture in the forest clearings and build 31
rough huts such as we see here. Others are still cave-dwellers,
living on wild game which they hunt with bows and arrows. 32
Here we have one of their rock shelters and here a group of 33
men with their weapons.

There is a variety of religions corresponding to the variety of
races. The Sinhalese are Buddhists; they date their conversion
from the visit of a disciple of Buddha two thousand two hundred
years ago, and the island abounds in proofs of their thorough
adoption of the creed. In Kandy itself we have the famous 34
temple of the Tooth. Here is a general view from the outside.
We pass through the entrance gate of massive stone, with 35
finely carved doors; but the temple within, of which we see 36
a corner here, is not imposing according to our ideas, in spite
of its great sanctity in the Buddhist world; while the tooth is
a piece of ivory which never came out of a human jaw. We shall
see more of such sacred remains as we journey northwards, to the
lower country and the older capitals of the kingdom, and chief
among them Anuradhapura. Everywhere are ruins of old monuments
half buried in the jungle; a sudden turn may often bring us to a
gigantic image of Buddha, carved out of the solid rock, or to 37
one of the curious _dagobas_,--bell-shaped solid erections of
brick or stone, sometimes plastered with lime. Each one of these
is supposed to contain some sacred relic of Buddha. Nearly every
temple has its _dagoba_, together with a _wihara_ or image house,
a _Bo_ tree surrounded by a platform, and a _pansala_ or house
for the priests. In Anuradhapura are to be found some of the
most famous of these shrines. Here is the Ruanweli, about two 38
thousand years old, still visited by crowds of devout 39
worshippers; and here is a nearer view. Again we have the 40
Thuparama, shining brightly in its coat of lime plaster; it is
the oldest and most sacred of all, and was built by one of the
kings to contain the collar bone of Buddha. Not far away is 41
a remarkable rock temple, the Isurumuniya; in the foreground we
see the high priest with his long wand of office, and beyond is
another _dagoba_. From the summit of the rock above the temple
we can look far and wide over the ancient city, with its ruins
of palaces and temples half buried in the trees, and imagine
something of the life of its first builders. Here is one of 42
these fragments; notice the finely carved moonstone at the foot
of the steps.

But the most remarkable relic of the past is not of brick or
stone; it is a tree, the _Bo_ tree, sacred beyond all others,
since tradition asserts that it sprang from a branch of the very
tree under which, at Gaya in the Ganges Valley, Gautama attained
his Buddhahood. If this be really the tree planted in the year
288 B.C., it is one of the oldest in the world with a recorded
history. At the entrance to the sacred enclosure we pass 43
the stalls of the sellers of lotos blossoms which the pilgrims
buy to offer at the shrine. Inside is the tree with its 44
raised terrace and altars piled with flowers, its priests 45
and groups of worshippers at prayer. It is a very different scene
from the Hindu temple or Mohammedan mosque.

In many of the old buildings of the Sinhalese kingdom there
are elaborate carvings and paintings; here we have a fine 46
specimen of an interior. Both the buildings and their ornaments
prove that the people were well advanced in some of the arts of
civilization. But the native arts and crafts are almost dead,
killed by foreign trade and cheap goods. We may still see at 47
Kandy the weaving of the native or _Dumbara_ cloths, and 48
the working in silver and brass; but these are barely kept
alive by people interested in the past. The Sinhalese generally
have no industries apart from agriculture, and even in this they
keep to the old and primitive methods and crops, leaving to
Europeans, aided by imported Tamil coolies, the real agricultural
development of the country. The next generation may see a change,
as the Sinhalese of to-day are learning to appreciate the value
of education. There are over a quarter of a million children
attending the schools provided or supported by the Government,
and a beginning has also been made with technical training. Here
we have a village school, with the classes being held in the 49
open air, as the building is too small for the crowd of 50
scholars. But it takes many years of education to change the
ideas and habits of a conservative people, and it will be long
before the familiar figure of the professional letter-writer 51
disappears from the steps of the post office.

We must look for modern progress not in the ruined cities but in
the new plantation districts of the hill country. The railway
will again carry us in comfort through the slopes of the planting
country to Niuwara Eliya, up in the clouds, six thousand feet
above the sea, the health resort of the planters and European
residents.

The prosperity of Ceylon to-day is largely due to the British
planter. The plantation industry started not with tea but with
coffee. Though it was grown by the Dutch in the lowlands, coffee
was of small importance until its introduction into the hill
country, in the first half of the nineteenth century. As the
interior was opened up the crop increased rapidly, so that, by
1870, Ceylon was exporting over a million hundredweight, as
compared with thirty thousand in 1837. Prices were high, the
railway to Kandy had recently been opened, new estates were being
planted, and every one thought that the future of coffee-growing
was assured. But at the very moment of greatest prosperity came
the first sign of the ruin of the industry. A minute fungus
appeared on the plants in some districts and began to spread
steadily. At first little notice was taken of the disease; but
it gradually extended to one estate after another and no remedy
could be found; while Brazil, which was free from the pest,
poured supplies of coffee into the markets of the world and sent
down prices to their old level. A series of very wet seasons
completed the work begun by the fungus.

The planters did not despair. They experimented with new
products, such as cinchona, until they again produced too much
for the market; but it was tea which in the end saved Ceylon.
The tea-plant was hardier than coffee and was found to be well
suited to the climate of the hill country, with its alternations
of rain and sunshine. As soon as the planters were convinced of
its value, large areas were planted with tea, so that between
1876 and 1886 the crop rose from eight to eighty million pounds
in weight. By the end of the century it had doubled again and
entirely displaced coffee as the staple crop of the island.
The whole industry has developed independently of the native
Sinhalese, by means of foreign capital, foreign direction and
foreign labour; even the very food for the coolies must be
brought in by sea, since the Sinhalese agriculturalists produce
little more than they need for themselves. But the planters
are not repeating their former mistake; they are experimenting
with other crops besides tea, as cacao and rubber; the latter
especially seems to have a good prospect in the future. The
Government also is assisting in the work. In the beautiful
gardens at Peradeniya, near Kandy, we may see a bewildering 52
variety of plants. Here is the native bamboo and the curious 53
talipot palm, which blooms only once after many years and 54
then dies; here is a specimen in bloom. The leaves of this palm
have a special interest, since they are used like parchment
for writing on; so that the native book takes the curious form
which we see in this picture. Here, too, are all kinds of 55
foreign plants being grown to test their fitness for cultivation
in the island. It was in the low-country gardens, connected with
Peradeniya, that the Para rubber tree was first introduced from
Brazil and many experiments made to discover the best methods of
growth and tapping.

The tea plant and rubber tree need plenty of warmth and moisture
for their growth, and these conditions are only to be found 56
in part of Ceylon. In Colombo it is hot and wet for the greater
part of the year, but in the early spring, though still hot, it
is dry. Over all the lowlands there is no winter and summer in
our sense of the terms, but only alternations of wet and dry. In
the hills it is cooler than on the plains, though there is even
more rain; but mainly owing to the structure of Ceylon the wet
and dry seasons occur at different times of the year in different
districts. The district near Colombo has most of its rain when
the Southwest Monsoon blows from the sea in the summer; in the
north and east of the island the winter is the wet season, when
the northeast wind comes down from the Bay of Bengal. Here the
rainy period is shorter than in the southwest, so that the total
fall in the year is less, and the whole country is drier. The
highland ridges, running from northwest to southeast, at right
angles to the course of the winds, form a rough barrier and
division between the two kinds of climate. At Niuwara Eliya we
are not far from the dividing line. We may drive across a ridge
or pass through a tunnel, leaving clouds and heavy rain behind
us, and come out into clear skies and bright sunshine. The whole
face of the country changes; in place of forest, plantation 57
and waterfalls, such as we see here, we find open moor and 58
grassland, or _patana_, with cattle grazing as on our own moors. 59
The contrast of seasons is so strong that the flowering periods
of many plants on opposite sides of the mountains are six
months apart, as they depend on variations of moisture rather
than of temperature.

We have been travelling through many miles of cultivated land on
a comfortable railway; yet in this same district, in the early
nineteenth century, our soldiers on the march to Kandy had to
hew a path through the jungle and sling the heavy guns from tree
to tree. The railway now extends from one end of the island to
the other; off the main routes we find good roads on which 60
coaches run; here is one of them carrying the mails, though its
appearance does not suggest very rapid or comfortable travelling.
Along many of the chief routes motor-cars now run. Improved means
of communication have opened up the interior to the planters and
enabled them to reach foreign markets with their products, and
have given us that effective control of the whole island which
was never attained by the Portuguese or Dutch. The history and
progress of Ceylon under British rule is bound up with the making
of roads and the building of bridges. With the coming of the road
and the railway the elephant has declined in importance, though
he is one of the most valuable products of the jungle and one of
the oldest articles of export. Elephants still exist in large
numbers in the island, but they are for the most part kept by the
native chiefs for ornamental and ceremonial purposes, especially
in connexion with religious processions. Here is a picture of 61
the last great drive; in the background are the wild elephants
just driven into the enclosure, while those in the foreground are
tame and trained to assist in reducing the new captures to order.

The wealth and progress of Ceylon depend upon its crops, and
the crops can neither be grown nor marketed without means of
transport; but the first condition of growth in a tropical region
is the supply of water. We have seen how the early kings built
great tanks or reservoirs for irrigation in the drier districts
of the north, so that the land could support a large population.
After the Tamil invasions these great works fell into decay and
became choked with jungle; native villages were even built inside
the old embankments. The Government is now reviving the policy
of the past rulers, and as more and more of the irrigation works
are restored the waste land of the north will be reclaimed and
the face of the country will change. At present, though Ceylon is
purely agricultural, with no manufacturing industries and only a
little mining for gems and plumbago, yet the food for the towns
and for the coolies on the plantations is brought over the sea.
This is an unnatural state of affairs; with proper use of its
great resources the island should be able to feed itself.

In the various works of improvement the Government has more often
found the natives a hindrance than a help, and the administration
is necessarily of the paternal type, though it is modified by
the presence of the European planters and the large class of
Burghers, or people of Dutch descent, in the population of the
towns.

Ceylon may be taken as a good specimen of the most highly
developed Crown Colony. It is ruled, under the British Colonial
Office, by the Governor and his Executive Council, consisting of
a few high officials. There is also a Legislative Council made
up partly of officials, partly of representatives of the various
races and interests. As the official element is always in a
majority, the Council is an advisory rather than a controlling
body, and does not in any way compare with our Parliament. The
unofficial members of the Legislature were formerly nominated by
the Governor, but the principle of election has recently been
introduced.

The island is divided into provinces, each under the charge of
a Government agent; but the unit of life among the agricultural
Sinhalese is still the village community, and the villages
are largely controlled on the native system through their own
councils and headmen. We have interfered as little as possible
with native customs or religion, and in the country districts the
people still keep to their old methods of life. In one respect
they have changed, and not for the better. Now that there is a
settled system of law and justice, they have discovered a great
fondness for litigation; and the intricacies of land tenure offer
fine opportunities for the display of this trait.

We can make part of our return journey to the coast by boat,
though only a short length of the rivers of the southwest is of
any use for navigation. Our boat is a curious double canoe 62
with an awning of palm leaves, and our boatmen are Sinhalese and
Tamils. We move slowly down the Kalu Ganga, past wooded banks 63
and palm groves, with here and there water buffalo or elephants
bathing, or a native asleep in a curious shelter raised on poles 64
above the ground; and so back again to Colombo and its
cosmopolitan crowd.

LECTURE V

THE MALAY REGION

We now leave Ceylon, cross the eastern arm of the Indian Ocean,
and turn southward through the Straits of Malacca. We shall find
ourselves in a new world, among people very different from those
that we have met in the earlier part of our voyage. The key to
the understanding of the whole region is Singapore, a century
ago an unimportant island, though even then a few far-seeing
people realized its magnificent possibilities. The Dutch, at
that time the chief commercial Power in the Malay Archipelago,
were preparing to seize the island when they were anticipated by
Sir Stamford Raffles, the East India Company’s representative
at Bencoolen in Sumatra. He was the true founder of the modern
city, and it does right to perpetuate his name in its streets and
public buildings.

We may consider Singapore, on its little island, to be the 1
capital of the whole region of British Malaya. Of what does
British Malaya consist? In the first place, in addition to
Singapore, there are the British Possessions on the western
side of the Malay Peninsula. In the north we have the island of
Penang, with Province Wellesley on the mainland opposite; further
south, but grouped with Penang for administrative purposes, are
the Dindings and the island of Pangkor; further south still is
the territory of Malacca.

The total area of these small fragments is a little over 1,200
square miles, or less than that of the county of Kent; but
outside them the whole of the southern part of the peninsula, a
country about the size of England, is under British Protection.
In the extreme south, opposite the island of Singapore, is the
Malay state of Johor. In the middle is a group of four states,
Perak, Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Pahang, which were federated
in 1895 and are now known as the Federated Malay States. On the
northern boundary are Kelantan, Trengganu, Kedah and the little
state of Perlis; these by agreement with Siam, in 1909, were
transferred from Siamese suzerainty to the protection of Britain.
The Governor of Singapore is High Commissioner for the protected
Malay States, and under him there are British residents, advisers
or agents in all the States, supplemented in the Federated Malay
States by a large staff of British officers.

In addition to the territory in the Peninsula, the Straits 2
Settlements now include various scattered and distant islands
which have been attached at different times to the Colony. These
are Labuan, off the coast of Borneo, with the Cocos or Keeling
Islands and Christmas Island, both in the Indian Ocean. The
Cocos, about 700 miles southwest of Java, are on the route 3
of steamers sailing from Colombo to Western Australia, and
possess a submarine telegraph station. They are a mere group
of coral atolls, with a population of a few hundreds, engaged
chiefly in preparing copra from the coconuts with which these
atolls abound. They are still ruled, under the Government of the
Straits Settlements, by the head of the Scotch family, Ross by
name, by which they were first colonized. Christmas Island, about
as large as Jersey, lies some 200 miles south of Java; it was
not inhabited until a little over twenty years ago, when it was
settled from the Cocos. The attraction here lies in the valuable
deposits of phosphate, though there is also some good timber
in the dense forest which clothes the slopes of the mountain.
The population, of about a thousand, consists mainly of Chinese
miners. Here we see the harbour of Flying-Fish Cove, on the 4
north coast, where there is good anchorage and a break in the
steep cliffs which form the coastline; and here again is one 5
of the quarries. The island is a great contrast to the low-lying
Cocos banks, with their groves of palms.

In Borneo there is no strictly British territory other than the
island of Labuan; but the State of Sarawak, whose ruler is an
Englishman, and the remains of the old Sultanate of Brunei, are
under British protection, while the British North Borneo Company
holds its territory under a charter from the Crown.

The political relations of all these islands and territories
are in charge of the hard-worked Governor of the Straits 6
Settlements, whose home we see in Singapore.

From the time of its cession to us, in 1824, by the local ruler
on the mainland, Singapore rapidly outdistanced the older
settlements of Malacca and Penang; until, in 1867, after a period
of dependence on India, the whole region started a separate
existence as a Crown Colony, under the name of the Straits
Settlements, with Singapore as the capital. The reason for the
rapid development of this obscure island is evident on the map. (2)
It commands the Straits of Malacca and the southern entrance
of the China Sea; the only alternative is the Strait of Sunda,
beyond the Equator, five hundred miles to the southward. It is
the halfway house between India and China, and its position at a
corner makes it the junction point of all the routes connecting
the Indian Ocean with the Pacific. It is also the natural
collecting and distributing centre for much of the local trade of
the Malay region. As a consequence, an island less than twice the
size of the Isle of Wight, and with no resources of its own worth
mentioning, has become the site of one of the greatest seaports
in the world.

Singapore is not only a junction of trade routes and a strongly
garrisoned naval base, it is also a meeting point of different
races. The population is a strange mixture of Chinese, Malays
and Indians, with a handful of Europeans controlling the whole
mass. The Chinese, in numbers, industry and wealth, have been
the most important factor in the growth of the whole region,
and their influence increases every year. The Malays approach
them in numbers, but lag far behind in intelligence and capacity
for work; while the Indian element, mainly Tamil coolies as in
Ceylon, is much smaller.

The town of Singapore stands on the south side of the island
facing the open sea, and the Old Port is not well adapted to the
needs of modern commerce; large vessels, as we see in this 7
picture, must anchor off shore in the roadstead and unload into
barges. The coast, where it has not been reclaimed, is low and
marshy, and the old wharves bear a look of neglect and decay.
But west of the Tanjong Pagar dock, now Government property, 8
is Keppel Harbour, a narrow deep-water channel, protected on the
seaward side by two small islands. Large steamers can moor at the
Tanjong Pagar wharves to take in coal or merchandise, and here we
find the mail boats, British, French, German and others; while
the old harbour and the mouth of the little Singapore river are
crowded with Chinese boats and boatmen, and with barges bringing
goods from the steamers in the roadstead. Here we have a view 9
of a corner of the wharves in the river.