HUNTING & SHOOTING IN CEYLON 



sized tanks from 500 to 1000 acres exist in hundreds, 

 and the small village tanks from 5 to 50 acres and over 

 exist in thousands ! Many hundreds, if not thousands, 

 of the smaller tanks are still in use, and other thousands, 

 abandoned, forgotten, and grown up in forest, are being 

 discovered, daily, by the Topographical Survey parties 

 now at work. One has only to look at the new 

 topographical sheets of the Northern, or North Central, 

 or North-Western Province to grasp the extent of the 

 ancient irrigation system. How they found their levels 

 for banks, overflows, sluices, and channels is a mystery, 

 seeing that the work must have been carried out in 

 big forest, as a rule, originally ; and though their banks 

 are clumsy and of unnecessary bulk, and though want 

 of knowledge in dealing with rockwork led to disaster, 

 still these monuments of industry have stood, some of 

 them, for two thousand years and stand to this day, in 

 many cases, as good as when first built. All the bigger 

 tanks have their earth bank lined on the inside with 

 stone " pitching," to save wash by the lapping of the 

 waves, and this has led more than one writer into the 

 error of thinking that the banks are built of solid stone 

 even Sir Samuel Baker making the same mistake. None 

 of the banks are made of stone ; the only stone embank- 

 ments in use were those made to dam up rivers turning 

 the streams down some other course. The visitor to the 

 low country will find these wonderful tanks everywhere 

 the most ancient, or least used, all grown up in forest ; 

 others forming large plains of grass or swamp with 

 more or less water, here and there, in pools. Many have 

 been repaired by Government, and an Irrigation Depart- 

 ment has a large staff of engineers at work repairing 

 others, though I rather deprecate the policy of tackling 



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