MALAY LAND TENURE. 83 



" the whole enclosure is abandoned and permitted to return 

 " to jungle, the adventurers moving onward to clear a fresh 

 " Chena elsewhere, and take a crop off some other enclosure, 

 " to be in turn abandoned like the first ; as in this province 

 " no Chena is considered worth the labour of a second culti- 

 " vation until after an interval of fifteen years from the 

 " first harvest. 



" During the period of cultivation great numbers resort to 

 " the forests ; comfortable huts are built ; poultry is reared ; 

 " thread spun, and chatties and other earthenware vessels are 

 " made and fired ; and by this primitive mode of life, which 

 " has attractions much superior to the monotonous cultivation 

 " of a coco-nut garden or an ancestral paddy farm, numbers 

 " of the population find the means of support. It likewise 

 " suits the fancy of those who feel repugnant to labour for 

 " hire, but begrudge no toil upon a spot of earth which they 

 " can call their own ; where they can choose their own hours 

 " for work and follow their own impulses to rest and idleness. 

 " It is impossible to deny that this system tends to encourage 

 " the natives in their predilection for a restless and unsettled 

 " life, and that it therefore militates against their attaching 

 " themselves to fixed pursuits, through which the interests of 

 " the whole community would eventually be advanced. It 

 " likewise leads to the destruction of large tracts of forest land, 

 " which, after conversion to Chena, are unprofitable for a long 

 " series of years ; but, on the other hand, it is equally evident 

 " that the custom tends materially to augment the food of the 

 "district (especially during periods of drought ) ; to sustain 

 " the wages of labour, and to prevent an undue increase in the 

 " market-value of the first necessaries of life. Regarding it in 

 " this light, and looking to the prodigious extent of forest land 

 " in the island, of which the Chena cultivation affects only a 

 "minute and unsaleable portion, it is a prevalent and plausi- 

 " ble supposition, in which, however, I am little disposed to 

 " acquiesce, that the advantages are sufficient to counterba- 

 " lance the disadvantages of the system/'' 



Forbes,"* who also gives a full description of this system of 



* British Burma, 281. "I am not aware that the ladanr/ mode of cultiva- 

 " tion offers any other advantage to the Malays than that it is compatible with 

 " the enjoyment of a wandering- life." — Newbold, Straits of Malacca, I, 263. 



