NO. 37. — 1888.] INDUSTRIES OF CEYLON. 339 



without great difficulty and delay. Trade and industrial 

 enterprise were necessarily then almost confined to the 

 coasts, each of which in turn was practically inaccessible for 

 half the year during the monsoons, the small craft the 

 Island possessed being unable to cope with them. In Knox's 

 time, the King of Kandy required his subjects to bring with 

 them, and deliver to him, the products of the country under 

 his rule, and that faithful historian describes graphically the 

 detentions, losses, and privations to which the people were 

 exposed whilst waiting His Majesty's pleasure to receive 

 them. He also relates that arecanuts lay on the ground 

 ungarnered, because there was "no vend for them," or 

 indeed for any other of their fruits. It follows that under 

 such conditions, so comparatively recent, the industries of 

 the Island were necessarily confined to such commodities as 

 could be carried by almost impracticable paths to all but 

 inaccessible markets. 



Nor were the conditions much better under the Dutch, 

 whose proceedings, as we have already shown, offered no 

 inducement to the natives to pursue by choice the industries 

 forced upon them, even if the markets that Government pro- 

 vided had been more accessible than they were made by the 

 canals they constructed. 



It was not until the British Government introduced the 

 system of roads throughout the Island, for which it has since 

 been so justly noted, that this essential element of industrial 

 success has been provided. This means of communication 

 has, in the meantime, been superseded by railways, in which 

 steam takes the place to a very large extent of draught by 

 animals. Unless Ceylon proceeds more energetically, how- 

 ever, and by private enterprise, to complete the chain of 

 intercommunication by rail, she will be left far behind in 

 the keen competition of powerful rivals in her newest enter- 

 prises, and will suffer discouragement, or possible defeat. 

 The policy of constructing railways at the expense of the 

 existing local industries, and of devoting them when paid 

 for to the raising of revenue by means of excessive rates of 



