398 THE IRRIGATION AGE,. 



able; those acquainted with agriculture, and ready to work themselves 

 as farmers, being taken on at once. 



This system of constructing a new canal in waste land, and colo- 

 nizing the land by new settlers has already been tried on a smaller 

 scale, and had answered very successfully in the Panjab, in two other 

 places where inundation canals were constructed. The people having 

 seen or heard of these, were quite willing to come where there was a 

 perennial canal, and felt assured that their future prospects as colo- 

 nist would be quite safe. When the construction of these two canals 

 was determined on, it was quite a new experiment in colonization in 

 North India and no certainty was felt that sufficient colonists of the 

 right stamp could be induced to come without great attractions, and 

 valuable considerations being held out. Among the conditions there- 

 fore, put forward, was the promise, that every colonist would be al- 

 lowed to purchase outright the full proprietary rights in his land for 

 a very low value, about $2.00 per acre, if he should prove himself 

 able within a few years, to bring it all under cultivation. It was not 

 long however, before the government found that in so doing it was 

 virtually giving away for next to nothing much valuable property. 

 The land became worth several times that value, and purchasers were 

 willing to pay the full value. . The government therefore, naturally, 

 reasonably and wisely determined in future cases to retain the pro- 

 prietary rights in its own hands, or to sell land only at its full value 

 as land with assured irrigation rights and facilities, 



There were other strong reasons why the government should keep 

 the ownership of the land in its own hands rather than sell it. When 

 any lots of land were sold or leased to men who were not themselves 

 real colonists, wishing to settle on and farm the land, such men 

 brought in tenants from outside and rented the land to these to culti- 

 vate. Now the prospects of tenants on this rich virgin soil, with an 

 abundant and assured supply of water for flow or gravity irrigation 

 were far better and safer than those of tenants in neighboring places, 

 where cultivation had to be carried on chiefly by lifting water from 

 wells by bullock power; or where there was a less certain means of ir- 

 rigation from the old inundation canals to obtain which irrigation 

 also much time and labor had to be spent on annual silt clearances in 

 the canals and distributaries. Consequently these places were largely 

 deserted by their tenants for the new colony lands; and the owners of 

 the former loudly complained of being ruined by their tenants being 

 attracted elsewhere, and their land being thus abandoned and thrown 

 out of cultivation. Government also lost the land revenue assessed 

 on these lands as cultivated land. It became therefore necessary to 

 see that the colonization of new land did not tend to throw other land 

 out of cultivation. If the new land was sold or leased to capitalists, 



