96 
THE TFfOPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
[August i, i8go. 
as Chief Magistrate, unassisted by any competen- 
European subordinate, chains him at headquarters. 
The district officer, furthermore, however ubiquitous 
oannot be acceptet^ as an authority on the suitableness 
of lands for planting purposes ; and the Government 
can do no more than mark down the locality of waste 
lands and leave it to the intending settler to prospect for 
himself as to their suitability for his purposes. At the 
same time the difficulties in the way of an individual 
planter prospecting the district are almost insuperable, 
unless he is prepared to rough it very considerably 
and to pay heavily for every step he takes. 
Only the magic influence of authority is able to com- 
mand elephants and coolies and boats without vex- 
atious delay and overcharge. All these difficulties, 
were smoothed to me, and there was, so to speak, 
only the bill to pay ; but what inoney may not pur- 
chase was the wealth of information elicited on the 
questioning of villagers and headmen summoned to 
the Deputy Commissioner’s presence m the evenings 
of our halts. Here 1 learnt many interesting parti- 
culars in regard to the nature and position or lands 
which my time did not allow me to visit. I have 
alluded to the waste of money naturally incurrred by 
the mistaken demarcation of allotments for planters 
on the Natvaydonng range, and the construction cf a 
road thereto from the town of Tavoy, 60 miles dis- 
tant. all arising from an insufficient knowledge of the 
district and of the lands most suitable for varie- 
ties of cultivation, points which alone are 
capable of determining ; and I would throw out the 
suggestion, although Government has little enough 
money to spare for such a purpose, yet that lor just 
once in a way the Government might make up a 
party of three or four practical planters and send them 
all round the district on a cold weather tour with 
the Deputy Commissioner. The outcome of this might 
confidentlv be regarded as something practical, lo my 
own observation I have seen thousands of acres of 
splendid lands lying in valleys and on the slopes ot 
hills, forest grown, and inaccessible for want of road 
communication with a main track such as a systematic 
survey ky planters would indicate to be both natnra 
and convenient. The longest open route m the dis- 
trict is along the alignment of the 
ning from the town of Tavoy, 40 miles, to Muttra m 
the centre of the district and along the valley of,*he 
Tenasserim river for 40 miles more, uutu. ii^ 
through a pass in the hills leading into Siam. This 
is commonly known as the old trade route, but 
as a matter of fact it has never been a trade rout®, 
old or new, and there never has been or is t er a y 
trade passing by this or any other way into or rom 
Siam. As I am informed, there was of ^ 
through the forest directly over the hills in ® 
drous straight line of travel marked •„ 
themselves in primeval tracts where the_D. • • ■ 
yet uncreated, which struck the Tavoy ^ 
miles above where it empties itself into the ea. i 
route presented many dangers by flood and e , rom 
wild beasts, and hardly less dangerous now it tne 
traveller escaped drowning from broad rivers an 
swollen streams. It was the known highway, but was 
rarely travelled on, and came to be altoget er a an 
done'd upon the construction of the road along tne 
telegraph alignment. This road, which has oos a gr a 
deal in construction, and which involves a heavy 
tenance charge to keep it in repair, serves no ra o 
purposes. There are not, perhaps, 100 traveOst P ‘ 
ing along it in the year. It is purely for 
re.pair of the international telegraph line cona™“D ea- 
ting with Pankok. The utility of this road for any traae 
purpose is problematical, seeing that Tavoy, w 
capable of being made a port as good as Moulm^in, a 
present offers no ouHotor ingress for goods or 
there being a retched steam service supporfeu by 
the mail subsidy. Tt is eapable of tapping thed's rict 
in various jiarts along tiio course of produce which mignt 
beerown; but for more Iban half its length, after cros- 
sing the water at Mitba at the coufliipiico of the ^oree 
rivers wliieh unite hero, it pursues its wav along 
bank of the Tonasaorim river, overhung by a sleep 
hibide. 
The Tenasserim river runs due south from Mitha* 
where it tn kes a bend and runs parallel to it under the 
name of the Bainchown, which has its source in the hills 
at the Natj'aygoung end of the district. It is up the 
valley of the Bainchown that the principal road would 
have to be made. Here on both banks there are fer- 
tile lands sloping to the water and breasting the hills, 
It is here that the familiar expression of thousands of 
acres of rich lands lying uncultivated may be rightly 
applied. The valley is broad, open, and wide, and yet 
is shut in until at its southern extremity the mountain 
track already mentioned as the ancient highway to 
Siam shall have been adapted to wheeled traffic. But 
it is not here alone that thousands of acres offer, but 
all along the valley of the Karoounthway which is 
the name of the third river uniting at Mitba. The 
Kamou nthway runs due north, finding its source on 
the hills which are as a wall between Tavoy and the 
adjoining district of Amherst, and from which the 
River Tavoy also derives its origin. At the head waters 
of the Tavoy river the Government has its principal 
Forest-reserve which is rather of the nature of a 
prospective reserve, not yet supplying timber in any 
quantity. Indeed, the two forest reserves, one in the 
north and the other in the south, appear to me to 
have been marked out in localities from which the 
timber can only be got out at greater coat to Govern- 
ment than it can be worth while to incur, viewing the 
proceeding in the light of an ordinary profit and loss 
transaction. Obstructions in the river necessitate 
blasting on a large scale at several points ; and the 
art of timber felling by the employment of machinery 
has yet to supersede the rude methods practised by 
the Forest Department. 
All down the Tavoy river there are lands suitable 
for the planter, that is to say, at various points, and 
standing back from the river almost until the town 
of Tavoy is reached, where the country is lowlying and 
alluvial, and for the greater part only capable of 
paddy cultivation. I have been asked what Tavoy is 
capable of growing besides paddy that would be profi- 
table to the settler. The enumeration of crops and eco- 
nomic products is emphatically endless. All that the 
fertility of Ceylon and the Straits Settlements may 
produce is concentrated in Tavoy, with the advant- 
age of latitude, and with the peculiarity rhat here will 
be found in more luxuriant growth, the flora of con- 
siderable altitudes on the Coromandel or opposite 
coast, and elsewhere in India. The Querevs fenestra, 
a species of oak common to the mountains in the 
vicinity of Sylhet, grows indigenous in Tavoy, not 
fifty feet above the level of the sea. The gamboge 
garcinia pictoria, which grows on the highest parts of 
the AVynaad, is found at the foot of the hills in Tavoy, 
which border on tide water. The Ardesia humilis is 
a common shrub at Tavoy, growing down to the plains, 
but its habitat on the other coast is the eastern slopes 
of the Neilgherries in sub Alpine jungle. Indigo is 
seen growing in wild profusion all the year round. 
The flora reads a lesson as to the climate of the coun- 
try which cannot be mistaken, notwithstanding the 
unfortunate conditions of heavy rainfall. There is 
not the least doubt that, with temperance, and avoid- 
ing unnecessary exposure, Europeans may live in Tavoy 
longer than in Assam, if, be it noted, an extensive 
clearing of forest, and drainage so as to divert flood 
waters, were systematically undertaken. This rich and 
great tract of country has never been opened out by 
private enterprise in the whole course of the 60 years 
that it has continued under British rule, and its head 
quarters or principal town comprises an inconsider- 
able village. The town of Tavoy stands in alluvial 
ground, and is hidden in the distance by tall palms 
and glossy-green jacks, and yellow-flowered cassias 
and twenty other flowering trees which overshadow 
its humble dwellings. From a neighbouring eminence 
the prospect is of undescribable beauty, a plain of 
encircling paddy fields intersected on the south by a 
silver stream fringed with the dark foliage of wild fig 
trees and the thick struggling bushes of a species of 
tnbiscus covered with large yellow and red flowers. 
On the east “ hills peep over hills” like the seats of a 
vast amphitheatre, bounded by Ox’s Hump, rising in 
