CH. I] VILLAGE OR PEASANT AGRICULTURE 143 



place of rice, and in the West Indies yams and other vegetables 

 do the same. 



The ordinary Ceylon villager, living on his ancestral lands, 

 cultivates, as his fathers cultivated, with cheap and primitive 

 tools, the few products necessary for his simple mode of life. 

 On the irrigated land, or fields, as distinguished from the un- 

 irrigated or high land, he grows the rice which forms the staple 

 of his food. His little hut stands on the high land, and is 

 usually surrounded by a wilderness of trees, shrubs, and herbs 

 of many kinds, as described in Chapter XIV of Part II. The 

 composition of the wilderness varies in different districts, but 

 the general look is much the same. In it he grazes one or two 

 poor specimens of cattle, or turns them into the rice field after 

 the harvest, or out upon the road. 



The greater part of the high land, except in thickly populated 

 districts, is occupied by chena cultivation, or is land recovering 

 from chena, which is a favourite method of cultivation with the 

 villager, as already described in Chapter I of Part I. After two 

 or three crops he abandons the land, which grows up in scrub 

 for ten or more years before it can be again "chenaed." 



The villager, especially in the more outlying districts, has 

 but few wants that cannot be supplied by his own fields, or by 

 the labour of himself or his women folk. Cotton fabrics for his 

 scanty clothing, kerosene oil for his lamp where he has become 

 too advanced for coconut oil, a few simple curry stuffs, such 

 as dried Maldivian fish, a few brass and earthenware utensils, 

 simple furniture made by the village carpenter, chunam or lime 

 for his chew of betel, and perhaps a little arrack at times, sum 

 up most of his requirements. 



The sale of a little rice, a few coconuts, some betel nuts 

 or leaves, or (if he live near a town and has become enterprising) 

 of some vegetables or fruit, will provide him with these. He 

 is usually in debt for advances on his crops, if not actually for 

 loans on his land itself, to the money lender or the village shop- 

 keeper often the same individual. Only too frequently the 

 latter becomes at last the possessor of the land, while the former 

 owner works on it as tenant or even as coolie, or drifts away into 

 the town or into the less settled parts of the country. 



