he chief article of native consumption should also be one of export
from a country so admirably adapted to its production. This is not now
the case; indeed, it is and has long been one of the principal imports
from India and elsewhere. It is estimated that every native adult who
can get it consumes a bushel of rice each month in the year. To the
Singhalese rice is what wheat is to the average American, namely, the
staff of life. To promote its cultivation, the English government
should repair the neglected tanks, great and small. There is evidence
sufficient to prove that Ceylon raised all she required of this staple
for home consumption when her agricultural masses could get the
necessary water. In some localities where the rain is plentiful, the
rice planter is dependent upon the natural supply; but in most parts
of the island its cultivation is not even attempted unless a certain
artificial supply of water is first secured by means of canals and
reservoirs, it being quite as necessary as the very seed itself. There
is one great advantage which the planters enjoy in Ceylon over most
other regions; that is, the abundance and cheapness of free labor
obtainable at any season of the year. Coolies by the thousand are
always ready to come hither from southern India at the harvest time.
As many come regularly as can get employment.

When the island was at the height of its prosperity, there were in its
various parts at least thirty tanks of enormous proportions, and about
seven hundred of all sizes. In the nineteenth century, we attain the
object of water preserves by building structures of granite, like the
Croton and Cochituate reservoirs of New York and Boston, not nearly so
large nor any more efficient than these of the time referred to. But
to do this we have all the appliances of powerful machinery and
labor-saving methods, while these Herculean results in Ceylon were
achieved by human hands alone. One system is the consummation of a
high state of civilization, and of well-paid skillful industry; the
other, like the enduring pyramids, was the outcome of a barbaric
period, and of forced manual labor. While examining one of the vast
embankments, built, like all others, partly of stone but mainly of
earth, to securely hold the artificial lake, the author was
accompanied by an intelligent native, who was a local official of the
government. It was natural to remark upon the achievement of so great
a work by primitive means.