NATIVE EXCUSES. 
encroached on his hundred acres, or that half of your 
coffee was crown land! Again, this sort of thing only 
needed a beginning, like the letting out of water. If 
one survey w^as wrong, even slightly so, the next 
survey taken, adjoining it, would be worse, because 
many of the surveyors, in cutting out lands, availed 
themselves of the boundaries cut by their predecessors, 
insofar as they were necessary to connect. Why, 
and justly why, should they go and cut and measure 
a new line when here was an old one cut by Mr. 
? The working surveyor, having discovered this 
fact, writes down to the Surveyor General’s Office for 
a copy of Mr. ’s plan of the land adjoining, which 
he receives. Perhaps tliere is some small error, of no 
great importance, in the copy plan received ; at all 
events the working surveyor could not get his ov/n 
lines to fit exactly on the copy, but the difference is 
so very slight as not to be worth bothering about, so 
he makes it fit. Perhaps before very long the plan 
that w^as made to fit is also in requisition, in order 
to join on another piece of land, and of course it will 
nob fit either, and the difficulty of fitting is always 
increased as the surveys were extended. The reader 
can thus, without any difficulty, imagine how this 
sort of thing, from a small and trilling beginning, 
increased and extended. 
The natives were always very much averse to land 
sales taking place in the vicinity of their villages. 
They had always some plea to offer why the land should 
not be sold. ‘‘It was temple land.” “It was the 
hunting-ground of royalty.” “It was necessary for 
cutting their timber or the grazing of their cattle.” 
“ It would stop or otherwise injure the supply of water 
for their rice fields.” 
As all these complaints, however frivolous, had to be 
considered, it was often no small trouble entailed 
upon the Government Agent of the district, to visit 
the localities, and report as to the truth or otherwise 
of the appeal. But even the favourable reports of the 
authorities in regard to land sales did nob always 
satisfy the native mind. The writer was well accquainted 
with one of the surveyors who originally cut out the, 
or a portion of the, Pundaluoya lands, and has beard 
some anecdotes of those day’^s in support of what he 
has said. 
This surveyor had pitched his tent on some of the 
grass lands below Harrow Estate, the whole of the 
existing estates being then, of course, forest. He had 
had a weary toil and tramp from Pussellawa, as there 
were neither roads nor bridle paths. When he passed 
on, troops of natives came up in his rear, and mr. 
