Food of the People.--Rice Cultivation.--Vast Artificial
Lakes.--The Stone Tanks of Aden.--Parched Australia.--Coffee
Culture.--Severe Reverses among Planters.--Tea
Culture.--Cinchona Plantations.--Heavy Exportation of
Tea.--Cacao Culture.--A Coffee Plantation
described.--Domesticated Snakes.--The
Cinnamon-Tree.--Cinnamon Gardens a
Disappointment.--Picturesque Dwelling's.--Forest Lands.--The
Ceylon Jungle.--Native Cabinet Woods.--Night in a Tropical
Forest.--Rhododendrons.

The principal food of a nation is a most important factor, not only in
judging of its means of support, but also as regards the mental and
physical character of the people themselves. Rice has been the staple
product and support of Ceylon, as it has been of the population of
India and China, from time immemorial. There are to-day some eight
hundred thousand acres of land devoted to the raising of this cereal
upon the island; there should be twice that area devoted to the
purpose, to meet the imperative wants of the present population. The
unsuitability of the climate for ripening wheat is more than
compensated for by its prodigal yield of rice, producing two crops
annually, where water can be freely obtained. This grain is proven by
scientific experiment to contain more of the several essential
elements for support of the human body than any other which is grown.
As is well known, in cultivating rice, it requires to be flooded,
started in fact under water, after being first planted, and also to be
more than once submerged during its growth and ripening. To facilitate
the production of this nutritious grain, the great tanks already
referred to were originally built, in which to preserve, for
periodical use, the water which flows freely enough from the mountain
region during the rainy season, but when the dry period sets in, the
rivers become thread-like streams, fed only by a few inconsiderable
springs which exist in the hills. The oldest of these immense
reservoirs is believed to date back some centuries before Christ's
appearance upon earth, evincing by their construction a degree of
organized thrift and effective energy hardly equaled in our time.

The tanks not only saved the precious water from running to waste,
but, being tapped at suitable intervals, conducted it by sluiceways
and canals, distributing it to those localities where it was needed,
and at the exact time when it was wanted.

T