southeast corner, as Grand Port was the last convenient point of
call on the way from the Cape to Ceylon, before the long voyage
across the open ocean. After a century of partial occupation, the
Dutch retired in 1712, leaving behind them the name Mauritius,
taken from that of Count Maurice of Nassau, the Stadtholder of
Holland. The French, who were already in Madagascar and the
neighbouring island of Bourbon, promptly occupied Mauritius,
re-naming it Île de France. It was controlled by the French
East-India Company and became in a few years very prosperous
under the administration of Mahé de Labourdonnais. His name
still survives in Mahébourg, and we have already seen his statue
in Port Louis. During our war with France at the end of the
century, Mauritius, owing to its position on the only route to
India, was used as a base for attacking our commerce by the
French privateers who swarmed in these seas; so that its capture
became necessary for the security of our Indian possessions. Both
Bourbon and Mauritius were taken, but the former was restored to
France by the peace of 1814.
The island as we found it was a true French plantation-colony.
The ruling classes were the Creole landowners, French by descent;
while the actual work of the plantations was carried on by
slaves imported from Africa. It is still thoroughly French, and
the plantation system survives in a modified form as the sole
support of the people; but the former importance of the island
as a commercial and strategic centre has greatly declined with
the opening of the Suez Canal. Mauritius is no longer on a great
trade route, but it is well worth a visit in itself and is still
closely connected with our final destination, India.
[Illustration: MAURITIUS.]
We must first make a brief survey with the map. The island 39
is in the form of a rough oval, a little over thirty miles
long, less than half the size of the county of Kent. Its coasts
are fringed with coral reefs, broken here and there by gaps,
especially where the streams of fresh water enter the sea.
Behind these gaps are the seaports, of which only two are of any
size, Grand Port or Mahébourg at the southeast corner, and Port
Louis, the capital, in the northwest. Grand Port was occupied
first, but it is open to the Southeast Trades; so that Port 40
Louis, like Zanzibar, on the sheltered side, and with a good
harbour, has become the chief port for the whole island. In the
north and part of the east and the southeast corner the land lies
fairly low; here we find the chief towns, the plantations and
most of the population. A great deal of the centre and south is
filled up with hills and plateaux; some of the peaks rising to
over two thousand feet. Here are the Moka Mountains, behind 41
Port Louis, steep and rugged, crowned by a strange peak, 42
Pieterboth Head, which is a useful landmark for sailors. Notice
the Dutch name. In the southwest the hills are very near to the
sea; the coast plain is narrow, the slopes are steep and the
rivers come down in rapids and falls amidst wild and beautiful
scenery. Here is the Chamarel fall and here again are the falls 43
on the Savanne River. The railways are a fair guide to the 44
structure of the country, as they keep for the most part to
the lowland or the river valleys, except where the main line
from Port Louis to Mahébourg is forced to surmount the middle
of the plateau; while the Moka branch crosses a steep ridge on
its way to the lower country to the east. Here we see one of the
curious trains crossing one of the mountain streams at the foot 45
of the bare hill slopes; the picture gives a good idea of the
scenery on the railway.
The rainfall in Mauritius is heavy in the summer months,
December to March, especially on the east side of the hills,
where the wind comes straight in from the warm ocean; and the
temperature is high, at sea level, as Mauritius lies on the edge
of the Tropics. Heat and rain, together with a rich volcanic
soil, have made Mauritius what it is to-day. Agriculture is the
only occupation of the people, and the only important crop
is the sugar-cane. This was first introduced from the East
India Islands by the Dutch, though little progress was made
with its cultivation until the time of the French settlement.
The forest which then covered the island was cleared away, and
the cultivation of the cane, by means of slave labour on large
plantations, became the staple industry of the new colonists.
Large fortunes were made in the early part of the nineteenth
century, but Mauritius, like the West Indies, has suffered
greatly from the competition of beet-sugar, and its trade has
declined greatly, though it has still a good market in India. Too
much dependence on a single product has brought ruin on many of
the planters. Here is a picture of one of these large sugar 46
estates. In front of us we see the cane growing and the planter
looking over his crops; the ugly building, with the chimney,
which spoils the middle of the picture, is the mill where the
cane is crushed to extract the juice.
The cultivation of sugar in Mauritius, like that of tea in
Ceylon, has produced remarkable changes in the character of the
people. When slavery was abolished, in 1835, new sources of
labour for the plantations had to be found, and Indian coolies
were imported on a large scale. These usually remained when the
term of their contract was over; with the result that at the
present time about three-quarters of the total population of the
island is of Indian descent, the majority having been born in
the island. We find them everywhere in the island, living 47
contentedly in primitive huts and cultivating their small patches
of land. They are steadily acquiring the land in small plots and
manage to exist comfortably even under present conditions. In
short, Mauritius is becoming more and more an offshoot of India,
since not only the labour but much of the food supply must come
from the rice fields of India, so long as nearly all the land
under cultivation is given up to a single crop like sugar.
The climate, too, is more suitable to the brown than to the
white people; malarial fever is always present, and the general
conditions have not been improved by the cutting down of the
greater part of the forest. Sometimes the weather brings disaster
in a swift and sudden form, as Mauritius lies in the track of
the cyclones which whirl in from the northeast, especially in
March and April, and travel southwards towards Madagascar. In a
few hours one of these terrible storms can destroy houses and
plantations and undo the work of years. One of the worst of
these, in recent years, struck the island in 1892; and here we
see some of the damage done at Port Louis. The planter in 48
this beautiful island has truly many difficulties to contend
with. It is possible that the growth of trade in Madagascar and
on the neighbouring coasts of Africa may bring back a little of
its past prosperity to Port Louis; but Mauritius can never regain
the position which it enjoyed before the piercing of the Suez
Canal.
If we look at the map showing the depths of the Indian Ocean, (28)
we notice that Mauritius, with the sister French island of
Réunion, rests on a relatively shallow bank, raised above the
ocean floor. Following this bank northwards for nearly a thousand
miles, we come to a whole group of little islands which are
connected by a similar bank with Madagascar. The most northerly
of this group are the Seychelles. Another great bank runs
southward from India with scores of islets on it. In the north
are the Laccadives, close to the coast of India; in the middle
are the Maldives; and in the far south, beyond the Equator, right
out in the ocean, is the little Chagos Archipelago, including the
coral island of Diego Garcia, where at one time there was a small
coaling station used by vessels bound to Australia. All these
islands are but the fragments of a sunken land-mass which at a
very early period of the worlds history joined South Africa to
India. They are widely separated if we look only at the surface
of the sea, but really joined together if we look below.
Mahé, the largest of the Seychelles, has an area of rather over
fifty square miles, a little more than that of the island of
Jersey; we could walk from end to end of it in a few hours. A
map, showing Zanzibar, Pemba, Mauritius and the Seychelles 49
on the same scale, may perhaps help us to realize their relative
size and shape. There is one good harbour in Mahé, on which
stands Victoria, the capital, where steamers sometimes call
on the voyage from Aden to Mauritius or from India to Mombasa. 50
Here is a general view of the harbour and here is a street 51
in the little town. The whole group was dependent on
Mauritius and was given up to us at the same time as that
island. The language of the people is still modified French.
The Seychelles are fertile and beautiful and not unhealthy, in
spite of their nearness to the Equator. They naturally abound
in tropical plants, among which the coconut palm is the most
valuable to the natives. Here are some of these palms with 52
the mill where the oil is extracted from the nut. Here also 53
we see a species of fan palm, which has a strange history.
Centuries ago, the Portuguese found washed up in the Maldives
and on the southwest coasts of India a curious double nut, the
_coco-de-mer_. The tree which produced the nut was unknown 54
and could not be discovered in the neighbouring islands, so the
fable was invented that it grew in the depths of the sea. The nut
was much valued in India as a medicine, but in spite of careful
search not until the end of the eighteenth century was the parent
tree found in the Seychelles, where alone it grows. The Southwest
Monsoon, blowing for months at a time, carried the nut all the
way to India, just as it brought the fleets of Arab dhows from
the coast of Africa. So we have in this tale of the nut a useful
reminder of the climate of the Indian Ocean. We will now leave
the Seychelles after a glance at another strange product of a
neighbouring island, Aldabra. This is the giant tortoise. It 55
was at one time very common in this part of the Indian Ocean, as
we learn from the accounts of early voyagers, but it is now rare.
Mauritius and the Seychelles, with many of the smaller groups
and islands in the Indian Ocean, came into our hands in
connexion with the development of the old route to India by way
of the Cape. There is one group, among the nearest to India,
which through all the changes of Portuguese, Dutch and British
occupation has succeeded in maintaining a partial independence.
The northernmost of the Maldive islands are only about four
hundred miles from the coast of Ceylon, within easy reach not
only of the road from Africa and the Seychelles to India, but
also of the more important road from Arabia, the Red Sea and
the Persian Gulf to the Malay Archipelago and the Far East.
The language of the people, as we might expect from the near
neighbourhood of Ceylon, is closely akin to old-fashioned
Sinhalese. We may perhaps regard the people as colonists from
Ceylon, with a large mixed element due to the Arab traders
who must have visited the islands often in their voyages. The
Maldives have always followed the fortunes of Ceylon; they have
recognized in turn Portuguese, Dutch and British authority, but
have succeeded in avoiding complete annexation. This may be
due partly to the fact that there is little in them to attract
invaders. The islands which make up the group are mere coral
atolls, with no good harbours, a very small supply of good water,
and few products for trade. The Maldive trading fleet, which 56
we see here, does not suggest a very heavy traffic. What there
is, mostly dried fish, finds its only market in Ceylon, which
sends, among other things, fresh drinking water in return. 57
The Sultan is on good terms with our officials: here we see him,
with his suite, visiting a British warship, and here he is 58
receiving the return call of the representative of the Governor
of Ceylon. The connexion with Ceylon is formally recognized once
a year, when a solemn embassy comes from Malé, the chief island
of the group, to Colombo, to greet the representative of the
Suzerain Power. So we conclude with this embassy, which has 59
finally landed us in Ceylon.
In our voyage from the Gulf of Aden to Colombo we have made a
great circuit of the Indian Ocean, yet from beginning to end we
have never lost touch with Indian trade and Indian people. The
islands and ports which we have visited are only to be understood
as parts of a larger whole, united not divided by the sea. We
speak rightly of the Indian Ocean, since India is and always
has been the central fact in the life of this region, both
politically and economically. This was as true in the earliest
days of the Arab traders as it is to-day. We have replaced
sails by steam, cut the Suez Canal, and changed the direction
of the main ocean route; but as soon as we pass the Strait of
Bab-el-Mandeb, we find that our route is only one of many. We are
in a network of traffic and intercourse which was in existence
centuries ago, long before the first European keel broke into the
eastern seas.
LECTURE IV
CEYLON
Ceylon, which takes the first place among our Crown Colonies,
is the halfway house on our long journey. As we steam towards
Colombo there is little to suggest that we are nearing one of
the chief harbours in the eastern world. We see a long unbroken
line of coast, fringed with green coconut palms, with no trace
of bay or inlet. In the background rises an irregular hill mass,
topped with long ridges and sharp peaks. Presently we can 1
distinguish two great breakwaters, with a wide opening between.
The southwest wind is blowing and huge waves are dashing over
them, throwing up masses of foam as high as the masts of the
vessels which lie inside in a great basin, calm as a lake, a
mile and a half long and over half a mile wide. Here is a safe
anchorage for a fleet, with coaling jetties and a dry dock 2
which can take the largest vessel afloat.
[Illustration: COLOMBO HARBOUR.]
Like so many modern seaports Colombo owes everything to
engineering. Forty years ago the roadstead was open to the swell
from the southwest, except for the shelter of the little headland
from which the main breakwater now juts out. In those days our
vessel would have called at Galle, a hundred miles away at the
southern corner of the island. We can journey to Galle now by
railway along the coast, through interminable groves of coconut 3
palms, with glimpses of the sea breaking on the coral reefs
on our right and Adam’s peak rising into the clouds on our
left. Galle was in early times the chief port of the island,
the meeting point of Arab traders from the west and Chinese
from the east; it is a picturesque, old-world town, with many
relics of the Dutch occupation; but Colombo has now taken its
place as the commercial centre. Here is a view of the Galle 4
lighthouse, taken from the walls of the old Dutch fortifications;
the building behind the palms is a new Mohammedan mosque. In a
quiet corner we see native fishing boats, with more palms in 5
the background. Here again is a Hindu temple, dating from the 6
time of the Dutch occupation; the lions over the gate may perhaps
have been copied from some European coat-of-arms, as they look
rather different from the usual native devices.
Far away in the northeast is Trincomali, a vast landlocked 7
bay, with unlimited deep and safe anchorage, the only good
natural harbour in the island, in fact one of the best natural
harbours in the whole world. Here was for many years the
headquarters of the Navy in Indian waters; but it is out of the
track of steamers and away from the capital, so that it has
now been dismantled by the Admiralty. The Navy has followed to
Colombo the commerce which depends on it for protection, and
Trincomali, in spite of its great natural advantages, has sunk
back to the position of a third-rate local port.
[Illustration: CEYLON.]
Before we start on our tour let us study the map and form some 8
idea of the shape and nature of the land which we are about
to visit. Ceylon hangs like a pearl, as the eastern poets say,
from the end of India, to which it is nearly joined by the chain
of small islands and reefs which lie between the Gulf of Manaar
and Palk Strait. So shallow is the passage that large steamers
do not venture through, and proposals have already been made for
carrying a railway across. Ceylon is almost as large as Ireland;
the whole of the north is flat, and a belt of lowland forty to
fifty miles wide runs all round the east and south coasts. In the
southwest the belt narrows, between the sea and the foothills
of the block of highland which fills up much of the interior.
This block is an irregular plateau-like country, crossed by
ridges from northwest to southeast, cut into by deep gorges and
crowned by sharp peaks, many of which rise over six thousand
feet. The rivers are short and swift, except where they traverse
the broader lowlands of the north and northeast. The southwest
corner, with its highlands and coast strip and its entrance at
Colombo, is the real Ceylon of to-day; though in former times the
coast and the interior had each a distinct and separate life and
history.
The whole island is represented in the crowd, bewildering in its
variety of face and dress, which greets us on our landing 9
in Colombo. Here is a typical Sinhalese, wearing the _comboy_,
a wide length of cloth, of white or striped cotton, which is
wrapped round the lower half of the body; his long hair is done
up in a knot behind and ornamented with a tortoiseshell comb,
which gives a strange appearance to his head. We see this comb,
in its most elaborate form, in the portrait of a high-caste 10
Sinhalese; and we notice that, except for the comb, he wears 11
ordinary European dress. Here again is a native in the street
wearing a shawl round his shoulders, and yet another with a neat
drill jacket; the latter is probably in the service of Europeans.
The building behind them is a native theatre, roofed over with
green palm leaves. Finally, we have a picture of a typical 12
Sinhalese girl of the lower class.
Then we come on a group of dark-brown men wearing loincloths
and turbans and repairing the roadway with pick and shovel; 13
these are Tamil coolies from Southern India, doing the heavy
work of the town. Another trots in the shafts of a ricksha, 14
the carriage of the East, which we shall meet again. As we go
further into the town, we meet natives from the country districts
on their way to market in two-wheeled carts, thatched with 15
leaves of the coconut palm and drawn by little humped
bullocks. They wear the _comboy_ and little else, as they are
less influenced by foreign ideas than the people of the town.
Let us follow them into the _Pettah_, or native quarter, 16
with its trams and rickshas and busy shops. Here we see the carts
collected in the open market place, and in the streets we 17
notice a new type of men; these are Moormen or Mohammedans, who
carry on much of the business of the town. Some of them wear the
fez, which we see at times even in our own country; others, more
old-fashioned, wear strange-looking hats shaped like a beehive.
On our way back we pass a Hindu temple, which reminds us 18
again that India, its people and its creeds are close at hand.
The Europeans are almost as varied as the natives. Some are
English, officials or planters; others are Dutch by race; while
there are also a great number of half-caste descendants of the
original Portuguese settlers. Many of the half-castes bear
Portuguese names and imitate European dress and manners.
We can easily see something of the habits of the poorer classes
since they live largely in the public view. Their houses are
wattled huts of mud and bamboo, thatched with leaves or roofed
with red tiles, and open to the street except at night when they
are boarded up carefully, as the Sinhalese are not fond of the
night air. We may perhaps see a family occupied with the morning
toilet, in front of the house; and here in a corner of the lake
are the _dhobies_ or native washermen at work. The lake is 19
one of the most beautiful sights of the town; it is really one of
the lagoons which we find all round the coast, where the mouth of
a stream has silted up. The Dutch, following their home customs,
utilized these lagoons and developed a system of canals along the
low coastline. Part of the system is still in use, and we can
travel by small steamer from Colombo northward to Negombo. 20
Here is a scene on the canal. The Dutch have also left traces of
their rule in scattered fortifications and in the Roman-Dutch
law which is still the basis of the legal administration in the
island. Many of the lawyers in the local courts are of Dutch
descent.
The Dutch had ample time to leave their mark on Ceylon, as they
held it from the middle of the seventeenth century, when they
wrested it from the Portuguese, until the end of the eighteenth,
when it was handed over to Great Britain at the time when
Holland was subject to France. The Dutch traders were attracted
to Colombo and the southwest coast by the cinnamon which grew
there; the bark of the cinnamon was the most valuable product
of Ceylon and almost the only export, apart from elephants,
until well into the nineteenth century. The cinnamon trade was
a strict government monopoly, enforced by harsh penal laws, and
the monopoly remained, even under English rule, until 1832. One
other interesting trace of Dutch rule survives in the many miles
of palm groves, planted by forced native labour, which we have
already noticed along the coast from Colombo to Galle.
For a century and a half before the Dutch occupation the island
was under the power of Portugal. The wars of the Dutch were
undertaken to advance their trade; but the Portuguese fought
for the idea of Empire, and one of their chief aims was the
conversion of the conquered races to Christianity. The effect
of Portuguese rule still survives in the coast districts where
Portuguese names are common, in the mixed race and the local
corrupt Portuguese dialect, and above all in the thousands of
natives professing the Roman Catholic religion. The word Don,
formerly a Portuguese title, is still in use among the natives as
a personal name, and many even of the pure Sinhalese have adopted
high-sounding Portuguese names.