120 SUGAK 



of view, of sugar-cane growing in this region, and, added 

 to this, it must be remembered that paddy is a necessary 

 food, is extremely easy to grow, and is practically un- 

 affected by disease, and, at present prices, the crop is a 

 very profitable one. The ryot naturally prefers the small 

 expense and labour needed in growing paddy during 

 part of the year to the greater cost and constant 

 labour for the whole twelve months for sugar-cane, 

 especially when there is some doubt in the latter case 

 as to the success of the crop reaped. The need of capital 

 and the uncertainty of the outturn, because of possible 

 drought or disease, make sugar-cane cultivation more of 

 a venture. When any cultivator decides to embark on 

 this enterprise he is regarded by his neighbours as a man 

 of substance, with sufficient means to indulge in a certain 

 amount of speculation. 



(2) The North Indian Sugar-cane Tract. This is not 

 in the tropics. It consists mainly of a stretch of 1,000 

 miles of country south of the Himalayas, varying from 

 100 to 300 miles in width, extending' from the Brahma- 

 putra to the tributaries of the Indus, from Bihar and 

 Assam on the south-east to the Punjab on the north-west, 

 constantly becoming colder in the winter as one proceeds, 

 until the incidence of frost is a regular thing. The region 

 includes the whole of the northern part of the Gangetic 

 plain. The soil is fine, soft, stoneless alluvium, uniform 

 to a great depth, there being practically no distinction 

 between soil and subsoil. It is very easily permeable by 

 water, and, near the Himalayas, is well supplied with 

 water at no great depth, the water table sinking steadily 

 as we leave the mountains. The submontane tract thus 

 needs little irrigation, but further south there is a vast 

 network of canals, the crop is always irrigated, and the 

 sugar-cane occupies the lower portions and wheat the 

 higher. This North Indian tract accounts for from two 

 to three million acres of sugar-cane; thus far exceeding 

 the Peninsula in importance. 



The climate is, however, better suited for wheat grow- 

 ing than for sugar-cane, and it is with an undoubted 

 shock that a traveller, accustomed to the cane-growing 

 countries of the tropics, views the first cane field in North 



