CH. IV] TRANSPORT AND CAPITAL 17 



this method is as yet not uncommon in many parts of the 

 tropics, especially where the cost of making proper roads is 

 very great. 



The first real step towards modern transport facilities is, 

 however, the provision* of roads along which wheeled vehicles 

 can be driven. By this means transport is rendered much 

 cheaper and less precarious, and most of the more advanced 

 countries in the tropics have now reached this stage to a 

 greater or less extent. Some, such as Ceylon, the West Indies, 

 India, have now got a very widespread and perfect system of 

 roads, forming quite a network over the country. 



But with the interest in tropical agriculture that is now 

 being felt in many quarters, and the extension of agricultural 

 departments, and other organisations for the encouragement of 

 agriculture, it will probably gradually be found that the present 

 systems of roads, perfect though they may be, are altogether 

 insufficient for the purpose. If the villager is to grow " com- 

 mercial" crops, he too, even more than the more wealthy 

 proprietor, must be provided with cheap transport to the 

 markets, instead of the present system of footpaths and coolie 

 carriage. In a report upon the agriculture of the Federated 

 Malay States we have pointed this out, and suggested that the 

 whole country should be marked out by road reservations at 

 distances of about a mile apart in each direction, somewhat 

 as has already been done in the Western United States of 

 America. There is no need actually to make the roads in 

 these reservations, but the latter should be there before the 

 country fills up, when it would be very much more difficult 

 and costly to make them. By this means the country would 

 become broken up into blocks of about a square mile each, so 

 that every portion of land would have access to a public road, 

 for of course where the blocks were to be sold in small lots, 

 roads should be also reserved into the middle portions of them. 

 In this way the purchaser of any kind of agricultural produce 

 would have easy access to the places from which he has to buy 

 it, or the producer easy access to the markets where he has to 

 sell it, and so a considerable step would have been taken in 

 agricultural progress, for the small producer cannot afford to 

 w. 2 



