322 COFFEE. 



INDIA. 



A BIEd's-ETE view ITS EXTENT, POPTTLATION, PEODUCTION8, GOV- 



EKNMENT, ETC. 



One cannot see a great deal of India in three weeks, nor 

 within the narrow limits of a letter can he describe all that he 

 sees ; but time is precious now-a-days, general ideas have some- 

 times to answer where a more thorough investigation of a subject 

 would be desirable, and happy is he who can take the cream, and, 

 discarding the water — " boil down," as it were, his ideas into the 

 smallest possible compass. 



" British India " extends from Cape Comorin, on the south, 

 to the Himalayas, on the north, a distance of about eighteen hun- 

 dred miles, and from the river Indus, on the west, to the Ganges, 

 on the east, more than twelve hundred. In addition to this, it 

 includes a considerable portion of Burmah and Siam (mentioned 

 on the map under the head of " British Burmah ") lying on the 

 opposite side of the Bay of Bengal, and within this territory is situ- 

 ated the " Rangoon district," from which comes all our Rangoon 

 rice. Within this total area are crowded over two hundred mil- 

 lions of people, and it is the production and consumption of this 

 immense number of human beings that has constituted the largest 

 and most remunerative item in the commerce of Great Britain for 

 many years. Until we pause to think, it is hard to realize what 

 " two hundred millions " means when applied to human beings — 

 what their production and consumption may amount to. 



A few figures in regard to rice culture, which I found among 

 Government papers at Calcutta, served to widen my ideas in this 

 respect. Speaking of but three districts, containing about sixty- 

 five millions of inhabitants, the report stated that the annual 

 consumption, exclusive of reserve stores, exports and quantities 

 required for seed, was twelve and a quarter million tons, or twenty- 

 seven billion four hundred and forty million pounds, a quantity 

 equivalent to nearly one hundred and twenty-five million bags, or 

 forty-five million tierces. I do not now remember the size of our 

 Carolina rice crop, but I believe it was last year under eighty 

 thousand tierces, or say about twenty thousand tons, against, 



