highlands of the interior; their occupation and interests were
limited to the coast strip. It was left to England, in the
nineteenth century, to penetrate inland and build roads and
bring the whole of the island under a single control. We now
leave Colombo, and travel by train to visit the highlands and
the old capital at Kandy, where we shall learn something of the
up-country Sinhalese, who differ considerably from those of the
sea-coast. The line is built on a broad gauge and the train has
a comfortable restaurant car attached as in England. At the
start, we run through mile after mile of padi fields. The native
agriculture is simple: first the muddy earth is scratched with
a primitive plough, drawn by water buffaloes, which are used 21
in the fields as the wet mud does them no harm; the crop is
sown with many strange ceremonies, and a little later the water
impounded from the streams is allowed to flow over the young
plants; later still the land is again drained dry and the ripened
grain is reaped by hand. The Sinhalese are agriculturalists and
nothing else; working on their own land is among them the most
honourable pursuit, though they are not as ready to work for
others. They brought with them from their original home in Bengal
their national taste for rice, and kept to their former habits,
although much of Ceylon is not well fitted for its cultivation,
and great irrigation works were necessary to provide the water.
Even on the hillsides we still see the padi grown by means of
terraces. On the ridges between the padi fields are groves of
coconut palms; and here and there we come on a native village 22
or house, like the one in front of us, always with its little
group of palms and other trees, growing without attention
and providing for most of the simple wants of the villager.
The leaves provide thatch for his hut, unless he is wealthy
enough to use red tiles, and are woven into mats or baskets; the
stalks make fences, while the trunks give beams and troughs and
furniture. From the sap he makes sugar and spirits: the husk of
the nut gives fibre for rope: the shell makes drinking bowls and
spoons; while the kernel can be eaten, or dried as copra and
then pressed for the oil, which is exported to Europe. We have
already seen this in the Seychelles. It is hardly surprising that
where Nature supplies so much without effort on his part, the
Sinhalese is not according to our ideas industrious. To him the
coconut palm is a necessary part of his existence, and he well
expresses this in the saying that the tree will not grow out of
sound of the human voice. But the coconut palm has another aspect
in Ceylon. The Sinhalese gentry have discovered its commercial
value, and in various parts of the island, especially round
Negombo and Batticaloa, there are large estates where the nut is
grown on the plantation system for export. There is already a
larger area under the coconut palm in this form than under tea,
and the coconut as a commercial product increases steadily in
importance. It is interesting to note that it is the wealthier
natives and not the foreign planters who are mainly responsible
for the development of this profitable business. In the northern
part of the island we find another species of palm tree, the 23
palmyra. This palm is almost as important to the Tamils who
inhabit the district as the coconut is to the Sinhalese further
south.
[Illustration:
_Copyright._) (_See page 65._
KANDY.]
[Illustration:
_Copyright._) (_See page 74._
ELEPHANTS BATHING.]
[Illustration:
_Copyright._) (_See page 61._
MARKET IN THE PETTAH.]
As we approach Kandy the scenery grows wilder and the hills
steeper, and we may perhaps catch sight of a different kind
of cultivation. Long rows of low bushy plants are growing in
the fields, and scores of dark brown natives, men, women
and children, are picking the leaves. We are entering the 24
tea-planting district. In the distance is the planter’s house
and near it the sheds where the leaf is dried and packed for 25
the market.
Here and there, in this part of our journey, we may notice
stretches of desolate scrub breaking up the forest area. A
century ago there was a continuous belt of forest between Kandy
and the lowlands, jealously preserved by the native kings as a
barrier against the invader; now only patches of this remain. The
native has a method of cultivation styled _chena_: this consists
in burning a piece of the forest, cultivating it for a year or
two and then moving on to a new patch. The trees do not grow
again, but a low scrub springs up, useless for any purpose. When
the Government interfered with this wasteful practice the damage
was past repair.
We now reach Kandy, a beautiful old-world town, set in the
forest high up among the hills, and full of relics of past 26
history. Here we see it, looking across the artificial lake on
which it stands; and here is one of its streets. The people 27
in this district are old-fashioned and little touched by foreign
influence. They still retain many of the old feudal ideas.
Here we have a group of chiefs, in the picturesque native 28
dress, though the effect is rather spoilt by the clothes of the
Europeans; and here is a portrait of a chief showing his 29
dress of ceremony with its elaborate ornaments. These dignified
chiefs are very different from the native as we saw him at
Colombo. All round us are ruins of temples and public buildings,
often half buried in the jungle; but we can still see the 30
Audience Hall of the old kings of Kandy, with its carved wooden
pillars. It is now used as a modern Court of Justice.
The Kandyans have a long and notable history behind them. Two
thousand five hundred years ago, according to native tradition,
a prince from the Ganges Valley reached Ceylon and established
himself as king. The invaders were tillers of the soil, and
their rulers have left monuments of their energy in the many
ruins of irrigation tanks dotted about the dry northern part of
the island. They were not for long left undisturbed in their
conquest. From time to time the land was raided by the people
of Southern India, and the history of the kingdoms of Ceylon
is largely a series of wars. We can trace the gradual progress
of the later invaders in the removal of the Sinhalese capital
further and further south; first, from the coast to Anuradhapura,
then to Polonnaruwa, and so on to Kandy, and finally to Cotta,
now a suburb of Colombo. As the result of this movement, the
southwest district is to-day occupied mainly by Sinhalese, who
form two-thirds of the native population, while the northern part
is peopled by Tamils who belong in language, race and religion
to Southern India. The Chinese, who for many centuries traded
with Ceylon and at one time conquered it and carried away the
reigning king, have left no traces; not so the Arab traders of
the West. Their Mohammedan descendants still form a large part
of the population on the coast, especially on the east side,
and throughout the island they are the shopmen and traders in
nearly every village. So we have Tamils in the north. Sinhalese
in the south and Moormen everywhere; and all mingled together
with Europeans, Burghers and half-castes in the coast ports and
Colombo. There is one other race which we must not forget. In the
jungle of the wild Eastern Province are to be found the Veddas,
the dying remnant of the people who occupied Ceylon before the
coming of the Sinhalese. There are less than four thousand of
these curious people in the island and their number is dwindling
steadily. Not all are equally backward. Some of them practise a
rude form of agriculture in the forest clearings and build 31
rough huts such as we see here. Others are still cave-dwellers,
living on wild game which they hunt with bows and arrows. 32
Here we have one of their rock shelters and here a group of 33
men with their weapons.
There is a variety of religions corresponding to the variety of
races. The Sinhalese are Buddhists; they date their conversion
from the visit of a disciple of Buddha two thousand two hundred
years ago, and the island abounds in proofs of their thorough
adoption of the creed. In Kandy itself we have the famous 34
temple of the Tooth. Here is a general view from the outside.
We pass through the entrance gate of massive stone, with 35
finely carved doors; but the temple within, of which we see 36
a corner here, is not imposing according to our ideas, in spite
of its great sanctity in the Buddhist world; while the tooth is
a piece of ivory which never came out of a human jaw. We shall
see more of such sacred remains as we journey northwards, to the
lower country and the older capitals of the kingdom, and chief
among them Anuradhapura. Everywhere are ruins of old monuments
half buried in the jungle; a sudden turn may often bring us to a
gigantic image of Buddha, carved out of the solid rock, or to 37
one of the curious _dagobas_,--bell-shaped solid erections of
brick or stone, sometimes plastered with lime. Each one of these
is supposed to contain some sacred relic of Buddha. Nearly every
temple has its _dagoba_, together with a _wihara_ or image house,
a _Bo_ tree surrounded by a platform, and a _pansala_ or house
for the priests. In Anuradhapura are to be found some of the
most famous of these shrines. Here is the Ruanweli, about two 38
thousand years old, still visited by crowds of devout 39
worshippers; and here is a nearer view. Again we have the 40
Thuparama, shining brightly in its coat of lime plaster; it is
the oldest and most sacred of all, and was built by one of the
kings to contain the collar bone of Buddha. Not far away is 41
a remarkable rock temple, the Isurumuniya; in the foreground we
see the high priest with his long wand of office, and beyond is
another _dagoba_. From the summit of the rock above the temple
we can look far and wide over the ancient city, with its ruins
of palaces and temples half buried in the trees, and imagine
something of the life of its first builders. Here is one of 42
these fragments; notice the finely carved moonstone at the foot
of the steps.
But the most remarkable relic of the past is not of brick or
stone; it is a tree, the _Bo_ tree, sacred beyond all others,
since tradition asserts that it sprang from a branch of the very
tree under which, at Gaya in the Ganges Valley, Gautama attained
his Buddhahood. If this be really the tree planted in the year
288 B.C., it is one of the oldest in the world with a recorded
history. At the entrance to the sacred enclosure we pass 43
the stalls of the sellers of lotos blossoms which the pilgrims
buy to offer at the shrine. Inside is the tree with its 44
raised terrace and altars piled with flowers, its priests 45
and groups of worshippers at prayer. It is a very different scene
from the Hindu temple or Mohammedan mosque.
In many of the old buildings of the Sinhalese kingdom there
are elaborate carvings and paintings; here we have a fine 46
specimen of an interior. Both the buildings and their ornaments
prove that the people were well advanced in some of the arts of
civilization. But the native arts and crafts are almost dead,
killed by foreign trade and cheap goods. We may still see at 47
Kandy the weaving of the native or _Dumbara_ cloths, and 48
the working in silver and brass; but these are barely kept
alive by people interested in the past. The Sinhalese generally
have no industries apart from agriculture, and even in this they
keep to the old and primitive methods and crops, leaving to
Europeans, aided by imported Tamil coolies, the real agricultural
development of the country. The next generation may see a change,
as the Sinhalese of to-day are learning to appreciate the value
of education. There are over a quarter of a million children
attending the schools provided or supported by the Government,
and a beginning has also been made with technical training. Here
we have a village school, with the classes being held in the 49
open air, as the building is too small for the crowd of 50
scholars. But it takes many years of education to change the
ideas and habits of a conservative people, and it will be long
before the familiar figure of the professional letter-writer 51
disappears from the steps of the post office.
We must look for modern progress not in the ruined cities but in
the new plantation districts of the hill country. The railway
will again carry us in comfort through the slopes of the planting
country to Niuwara Eliya, up in the clouds, six thousand feet
above the sea, the health resort of the planters and European
residents.
The prosperity of Ceylon to-day is largely due to the British
planter. The plantation industry started not with tea but with
coffee. Though it was grown by the Dutch in the lowlands, coffee
was of small importance until its introduction into the hill
country, in the first half of the nineteenth century. As the
interior was opened up the crop increased rapidly, so that, by
1870, Ceylon was exporting over a million hundredweight, as
compared with thirty thousand in 1837. Prices were high, the
railway to Kandy had recently been opened, new estates were being
planted, and every one thought that the future of coffee-growing
was assured. But at the very moment of greatest prosperity came
the first sign of the ruin of the industry. A minute fungus
appeared on the plants in some districts and began to spread
steadily. At first little notice was taken of the disease; but
it gradually extended to one estate after another and no remedy
could be found; while Brazil, which was free from the pest,
poured supplies of coffee into the markets of the world and sent
down prices to their old level. A series of very wet seasons
completed the work begun by the fungus.
The planters did not despair. They experimented with new
products, such as cinchona, until they again produced too much
for the market; but it was tea which in the end saved Ceylon.
The tea-plant was hardier than coffee and was found to be well
suited to the climate of the hill country, with its alternations
of rain and sunshine. As soon as the planters were convinced of
its value, large areas were planted with tea, so that between
1876 and 1886 the crop rose from eight to eighty million pounds
in weight. By the end of the century it had doubled again and
entirely displaced coffee as the staple crop of the island.
The whole industry has developed independently of the native
Sinhalese, by means of foreign capital, foreign direction and
foreign labour; even the very food for the coolies must be
brought in by sea, since the Sinhalese agriculturalists produce
little more than they need for themselves. But the planters
are not repeating their former mistake; they are experimenting
with other crops besides tea, as cacao and rubber; the latter
especially seems to have a good prospect in the future. The
Government also is assisting in the work. In the beautiful
gardens at Peradeniya, near Kandy, we may see a bewildering 52
variety of plants. Here is the native bamboo and the curious 53
talipot palm, which blooms only once after many years and 54
then dies; here is a specimen in bloom. The leaves of this palm
have a special interest, since they are used like parchment
for writing on; so that the native book takes the curious form
which we see in this picture. Here, too, are all kinds of 55
foreign plants being grown to test their fitness for cultivation
in the island. It was in the low-country gardens, connected with
Peradeniya, that the Para rubber tree was first introduced from
Brazil and many experiments made to discover the best methods of
growth and tapping.
[Illustration: RAINFALL. JUNE-OCTOBER.]
The tea plant and rubber tree need plenty of warmth and moisture
for their growth, and these conditions are only to be found 56
in part of Ceylon. In Colombo it is hot and wet for the greater
part of the year, but in the early spring, though still hot, it
is dry. Over all the lowlands there is no winter and summer in
our sense of the terms, but only alternations of wet and dry. In
the hills it is cooler than on the plains, though there is even
more rain; but mainly owing to the structure of Ceylon the wet
and dry seasons occur at different times of the year in different
districts. The district near Colombo has most of its rain when
the Southwest Monsoon blows from the sea in the summer; in the
north and east of the island the winter is the wet season, when
the northeast wind comes down from the Bay of Bengal. Here the
rainy period is shorter than in the southwest, so that the total
fall in the year is less, and the whole country is drier. The
highland ridges, running from northwest to southeast, at right
angles to the course of the winds, form a rough barrier and
division between the two kinds of climate. At Niuwara Eliya we
are not far from the dividing line. We may drive across a ridge
or pass through a tunnel, leaving clouds and heavy rain behind
us, and come out into clear skies and bright sunshine. The whole
face of the country changes; in place of forest, plantation 57
and waterfalls, such as we see here, we find open moor and 58
grassland, or _patana_, with cattle grazing as on our own moors. 59
The contrast of seasons is so strong that the flowering periods
of many plants on opposite sides of the mountains are six
months apart, as they depend on variations of moisture rather
than of temperature.
We have been travelling through many miles of cultivated land on
a comfortable railway; yet in this same district, in the early
nineteenth century, our soldiers on the march to Kandy had to
hew a path through the jungle and sling the heavy guns from tree
to tree. The railway now extends from one end of the island to
the other; off the main routes we find good roads on which 60
coaches run; here is one of them carrying the mails, though its
appearance does not suggest very rapid or comfortable travelling.
Along many of the chief routes motor-cars now run. Improved means
of communication have opened up the interior to the planters and
enabled them to reach foreign markets with their products, and
have given us that effective control of the whole island which
was never attained by the Portuguese or Dutch. The history and
progress of Ceylon under British rule is bound up with the making
of roads and the building of bridges. With the coming of the road
and the railway the elephant has declined in importance, though
he is one of the most valuable products of the jungle and one of
the oldest articles of export. Elephants still exist in large
numbers in the island, but they are for the most part kept by the
native chiefs for ornamental and ceremonial purposes, especially
in connexion with religious processions. Here is a picture of 61
the last great drive; in the background are the wild elephants
just driven into the enclosure, while those in the foreground are
tame and trained to assist in reducing the new captures to order.
The wealth and progress of Ceylon depend upon its crops, and
the crops can neither be grown nor marketed without means of
transport; but the first condition of growth in a tropical region
is the supply of water. We have seen how the early kings built
great tanks or reservoirs for irrigation in the drier districts
of the north, so that the land could support a large population.
After the Tamil invasions these great works fell into decay and
became choked with jungle; native villages were even built inside
the old embankments. The Government is now reviving the policy
of the past rulers, and as more and more of the irrigation works
are restored the waste land of the north will be reclaimed and
the face of the country will change. At present, though Ceylon is
purely agricultural, with no manufacturing industries and only a
little mining for gems and plumbago, yet the food for the towns
and for the coolies on the plantations is brought over the sea.
This is an unnatural state of affairs; with proper use of its
great resources the island should be able to feed itself.
In the various works of improvement the Government has more often
found the natives a hindrance than a help, and the administration
is necessarily of the paternal type, though it is modified by
the presence of the European planters and the large class of
Burghers, or people of Dutch descent, in the population of the
towns.
Ceylon may be taken as a good specimen of the most highly
developed Crown Colony. It is ruled, under the British Colonial
Office, by the Governor and his Executive Council, consisting of
a few high officials. There is also a Legislative Council made
up partly of officials, partly of representatives of the various
races and interests. As the official element is always in a
majority, the Council is an advisory rather than a controlling
body, and does not in any way compare with our Parliament. The
unofficial members of the Legislature were formerly nominated by
the Governor, but the principle of election has recently been
introduced.
The island is divided into provinces, each under the charge of
a Government agent; but the unit of life among the agricultural
Sinhalese is still the village community, and the villages
are largely controlled on the native system through their own
councils and headmen. We have interfered as little as possible
with native customs or religion, and in the country districts the
people still keep to their old methods of life. In one respect
they have changed, and not for the better. Now that there is a
settled system of law and justice, they have discovered a great
fondness for litigation; and the intricacies of land tenure offer
fine opportunities for the display of this trait.
We can make part of our return journey to the coast by boat,
though only a short length of the rivers of the southwest is of
any use for navigation. Our boat is a curious double canoe 62
with an awning of palm leaves, and our boatmen are Sinhalese and
Tamils. We move slowly down the Kalu Ganga, past wooded banks 63
and palm groves, with here and there water buffalo or elephants
bathing, or a native asleep in a curious shelter raised on poles 64
above the ground; and so back again to Colombo and its
cosmopolitan crowd.
LECTURE V
THE MALAY REGION
We now leave Ceylon, cross the eastern arm of the Indian Ocean,
and turn southward through the Straits of Malacca. We shall find
ourselves in a new world, among people very different from those
that we have met in the earlier part of our voyage. The key to
the understanding of the whole region is Singapore, a century
ago an unimportant island, though even then a few far-seeing
people realized its magnificent possibilities. The Dutch, at
that time the chief commercial Power in the Malay Archipelago,
were preparing to seize the island when they were anticipated by
Sir Stamford Raffles, the East India Company’s representative
at Bencoolen in Sumatra. He was the true founder of the modern
city, and it does right to perpetuate his name in its streets and
public buildings.
We may consider Singapore, on its little island, to be the 1
capital of the whole region of British Malaya. Of what does
British Malaya consist? In the first place, in addition to
Singapore, there are the British Possessions on the western
side of the Malay Peninsula. In the north we have the island of
Penang, with Province Wellesley on the mainland opposite; further
south, but grouped with Penang for administrative purposes, are
the Dindings and the island of Pangkor; further south still is
the territory of Malacca.
[Illustration: MALAY PENINSULA: POLITICAL.]
The total area of these small fragments is a little over 1,200
square miles, or less than that of the county of Kent; but
outside them the whole of the southern part of the peninsula, a
country about the size of England, is under British Protection.
In the extreme south, opposite the island of Singapore, is the
Malay state of Johor. In the middle is a group of four states,
Perak, Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Pahang, which were federated
in 1895 and are now known as the Federated Malay States. On the
northern boundary are Kelantan, Trengganu, Kedah and the little
state of Perlis; these by agreement with Siam, in 1909, were
transferred from Siamese suzerainty to the protection of Britain.
The Governor of Singapore is High Commissioner for the protected
Malay States, and under him there are British residents, advisers
or agents in all the States, supplemented in the Federated Malay
States by a large staff of British officers.
In addition to the territory in the Peninsula, the Straits 2
Settlements now include various scattered and distant islands
which have been attached at different times to the Colony. These
are Labuan, off the coast of Borneo, with the Cocos or Keeling
Islands and Christmas Island, both in the Indian Ocean. The
Cocos, about 700 miles southwest of Java, are on the route 3
of steamers sailing from Colombo to Western Australia, and
possess a submarine telegraph station. They are a mere group
of coral atolls, with a population of a few hundreds, engaged
chiefly in preparing copra from the coconuts with which these
atolls abound. They are still ruled, under the Government of the
Straits Settlements, by the head of the Scotch family, Ross by
name, by which they were first colonized. Christmas Island, about
as large as Jersey, lies some 200 miles south of Java; it was
not inhabited until a little over twenty years ago, when it was
settled from the Cocos. The attraction here lies in the valuable
deposits of phosphate, though there is also some good timber
in the dense forest which clothes the slopes of the mountain.
The population, of about a thousand, consists mainly of Chinese
miners. Here we see the harbour of Flying-Fish Cove, on the 4
north coast, where there is good anchorage and a break in the
steep cliffs which form the coastline; and here again is one 5
of the quarries. The island is a great contrast to the low-lying
Cocos banks, with their groves of palms.
In Borneo there is no strictly British territory other than the
island of Labuan; but the State of Sarawak, whose ruler is an
Englishman, and the remains of the old Sultanate of Brunei, are
under British protection, while the British North Borneo Company
holds its territory under a charter from the Crown.
The political relations of all these islands and territories
are in charge of the hard-worked Governor of the Straits 6
Settlements, whose home we see in Singapore.