November i, 1882.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST; 



365 



BRITISH SETTLEMENT IN BURMA : 

 Planting Prospects. 

 To residents in Ceylon much interest has always 

 attached to the country which lies opposite us on 

 t)ie Bay of Bengal. Etlinically the energetic Indo- 

 Mongolian race wliioh inhabits Burma differs es- 

 sentially from both tlie Sinhalese and Tamils, but 

 the religious tie of Buddliism binds the Sinhalese, at 

 least, to the Burmese. As our readers are aware, 

 the Amarapura priests of Ceylon are so called, be- 

 cause men of what were deemed an inferior caste 

 were driven by the bigotted caste prejudices of the 

 Sinhalese priests to resort to Burma for ordination, 

 so originating "the Amarapura sect" as a protest 

 against what is said to.be as foreign to pui'e Buddliism as 

 it is abhorrent to tlie spirit of tiiie Christianity. 

 Like the rest of the Buddliist world, Burma recog- 

 nizes Ceylon as the central home of Buddhism be- 

 cause it holds the much venerated dental relic of 

 the gi-eat teacher of Nirwana and also because the 

 Bnrman code is believed to have been brought from 

 Ceylon by Buddhaghosa. Burma is a land of 

 monasteries (in which every Bunnan is expected to 

 spend a portion of his life), and the '■ monks," un- 

 like their lazy confreres in Ceylon, are really earnest 

 and industrious in the work of education, which is, 

 as yet, largely in theu- hands. The laity, too, are 

 industrious cultivators, especially of the gi-eat staple 

 rice. Taking the whole of Burma, British and in- 

 dependent, we get an area of nearly 300,000 square 

 miles, of whicli about 85,000 are imder British rule, 

 with 34 millions of acres cultivated out of about 60 

 millions cultivable. It is as if we held the Delta 

 of the NUe and all lower Egypt and were waiting 

 until the unbearable insolence and aggressiveness of 

 GUI- neiglibours compelled us to annex Upper Egypt. 

 But Pegu is even more a land of rivers and tidal 

 creeks, of deltas, floods and tertile mud-flats, than 

 Lower Egypt, and the British, with so much to do 

 in the region they hold, ai-e only too anxious to 

 postpone the inevitable in the case of Upper Burma. 

 That portion of the Burmese Empire which we an- 

 nexed in 1826 long proved unprofitable in a revenue 

 sense. But with the annexation of Pegu in 1852 

 commenced a career of prosperity and progi-es's such 

 as few portions of the world, even under British 

 rule in its best form, have sIicmti. The population 

 has far more than doubled, the increase in the past 

 Si years being no less than 36 per cent, while in 

 10 years the commerce has risen from about seven and 

 three-quarter millions sterling to over eighteen. 

 Rice is the oversliadowing staple of this trade, the 

 value of the portion exported last year constituting 

 one-third of tlie whole value of the trade or nearly 

 six millions sterling. Besides land revenue paid direct 

 by farmers whose holdings average five acres, the ex- 

 port duty on rice is about H per cent of its value. But 

 the returns are so good that the people are well-to-do, 

 spending liberally on monasteries, shows and theatricals 

 and spending an average of £12 per head on im- 

 ported goods, largely jewellery. We are speaking 

 exclusively of British Burma, of course, for the con- 

 trast across the border, wliere no man can call pos- 

 sessions or life liis o\ni if he incurs the displeasure 

 of corrujit officials and a tyrimt king, is as marked 

 as that 1/etween the brightest day and the darkest 

 night. The last census shewed tliat about a quarter 

 of a million, tliat is ont-eightli of the total po]nil- 

 ation of independent (and anarchical) Burma had been 

 attracted by British rule and liljcral laws as admin- 

 istered by gentlemen whose present head as Cliief 

 Commissioner is Mr. Bernard, a nephew of the late 

 Xiord Lawrence, and a man and aclministrtitor of the 



same stamp. Mr. Bernard and his staff of British 

 officers, with their successors for some generations, 

 have plenty of work cut out for them, in the im- 

 provement of territory equal to nearly four Ceylona 

 (between 80,000 and 90,000 square miles of area), of 

 which the vast proportion is still uncultivated, al- 

 though a full million of acres have been .added to 

 the crop-bearing land in the past ten years. Teak 

 timber is the second staple in the trade of Burma 

 and, in order best to utilize the timber and the 

 gi-ain, large imports of machinery have been made 

 in the shape of saw-mills, lice-husking apparatus, 

 &c. The revenue is large and increasing, and under 

 the recently adopted system of assigning to the 

 various provinces of the Indian Empire large propor- 

 tions of the money collected, within their bounds, 

 foi- provincial purposes, British Burma is likely in 

 the future to outstrip the past in the path of pro- 

 gress. A canal has been cut to join two gi-eat water- 

 ways, and some important sections of railway have 

 been constructed. But the great want to be supplied 

 is that of ordinary roads, which from the nature of the 

 countiy must be raised above flood level. The estimate 

 for such roads is £700 per mile and considering the high 

 cost of labor in Burma, it does not seem as if roads 

 made at such a figure can be anything like those for 

 which in Ceylon we now pay at the rate of £2,.509 

 a mile. Of course there is a gi-eat difference between 

 an abrupt mountain system and a flat plain, even 

 although the plain is liable to periodical flooding. 

 There are nearly 60,000 square miles of more or less fertile 

 land still available in British Burma and these await 

 labor and resident population. Labor is obtained from 

 the same fields which supply Ceylon, those of South- 

 ern India ; but in regard to Burma, even more than 

 to Ceylon, apparently, the laborers do not go to settle, 

 but to amass savings and return to 'their country." 

 As our readers too well know, there are many porti- 

 ons of the great Indian Empire over peopled, mouths' 

 being in excess of food, plentiful as that is in normal' 

 years. The remedy seems obvious: that the surplus' 

 should immigrate to such lands of promise as British'. 

 Burma, wliere, good wages to begin with property 

 in prospective and efficient protection of property and 

 life await them. But exaggerated conservatism ani 

 an increasing nostalgia are the banes of tlie Hindu 

 races and the plague of the race which wants to 

 govern them for their good. And so, even with all 

 the encouragement which the Provincial and Imperial 

 Governments can afford, human beings die in millions 

 or vegetate WTetchedly, while untold wealth of food 

 and all that renders life pleasant await them, if they 

 would but have tlie moral courage to leave their an- 

 cestral homes and found new ones in better situations. 

 The climate of Britisli Bumia is generally good, the 

 exception here as all over India being the lower 

 hill ranges. In Tavoy and Mergui there is abundance 

 of mountainous country, wliere " the forest primeval " 

 has not been desecrated by the axe and torch of the 

 ■ioomer (or ehenaer), and to sucli regions European life, 

 capital, enterprize and industry are invited. Tea is 

 indigenous in the forests, although the great Burmese 

 dainty (next to putrid fish) of " pickled tea " is sujiposed 

 to consist of the leaves of another plant, Elj-odendron I'lrs- 

 icum. As the rainfall ranges from 54 inches in the low- 

 country to 245 in the high, there is plenty of scope 

 for tea, coffee, cocoa, cardamoms (which like tea, 

 are indigenous), nutmegs, and most tropical pro<lucts. 

 We refer our readers to the report of experiments 

 made in Mergui by Dr. Heifer and more recently by 

 the Deputy Commissioner, Capt. Butler. Of couree, 

 there would be the danger of disease in the case df ' 

 coffee, and white ants and crickets seem as injurious 

 to young cocoa plants as ever those pests have been 

 in Ceylon. But, as Capt. Butler truly says, sui-h ob- 

 stacles can be fought and overconi'e. The labour 



