198 ANDAMAN ISLANDS AND INHABITANTS 



is in bad men, and bring that out, and that is the object that 

 the Government is aiming at in the system just explained. 



" Any one observing the work of the English in the East may 

 possibly be struck with the idea that the reason for the 

 acknowledged capacity of the race for colonial enterprise and 

 the maintenance of empire is the ability and the willingness 

 of the average Englishman to put his hand to any kind of 

 work that may come his way, without any special training, 

 from framing suitable laws and regulations and creating 

 suitable organisations to making roads and ditches, building 

 houses, and clearing land and ploughing it. Here in Port 

 Blair, the officers entrusted with the creation, organisation, and 

 maintenance of the Penal Settlement, have, without any special 

 training for the work, and without any special guidance and 

 teaching, managed with the worst possible material to work 

 upon — life and long-term convicts from every part of India 

 and Burma — to create in little more than forty years, upon 

 primeval forest and swamp, situated in an enervating, and 

 until mastered, a deadly climate, a community supporting itself 

 in regard to many of its complicated wants. 



" They began with the dense forests, the fetid swamps, and 

 the pestilential coral banks of tropical islands, and have made 

 out of them many square miles of grass and arable lands, 

 supporting over fifty villages besides convict stations. Miles 

 upon miles of swamp have been reclaimed, the coral banks 

 have been controlled, and a place with regard to which the 

 words climate and pestilence were almost synonymous has 

 been turned into one favourably spoken of as to its healthiness. 

 The Settlement now grows its own vegetables, tea,* coffee, 

 cocoa, tapioca, and arrowroot ; some of its ordinary food grains, 

 and most of its fodder. It supplies itself with the greater 

 part of its animal food, and all its fuel and salt. In other lines 

 of work, it makes its own boats, and provides from its own 

 resources the bulk of the materials for its buildings, which are 

 constructed and erected locally. Amongst the materials pro- 

 duced are all the timber, stone, bricks, lime, and mortar, and 

 most of the iron and metal work are made up there from raw 

 material. In the matter of convict clothing, all that is necessary 

 to be purchased elsewhere are the roughest of cotton hanks 



* Orange Pekoe and Pekoe Souchong. 



