There were cocoa-nut fibres enough to spin a coir rope which might measure the equator; but coir was so taxed, as soon as it became rope, that the government need have little fear that any one would buy but itself and those who could get no cheaper cordage.
Chay-root, yielding the red dye which figures on Indian chintzes, spread itself far and wide through the light dry soil near the coast. How it should hurt the British government that all nations should have red roses on their chintzes had not been satisfactorily explained; but it was the will of that government that few should do so. The government bought up every ounce of chay-root which its Cingalese subjects were obliging enough to sell. There was much loyalty in thus furnishing chay-root; the diggers being paid a good deal less than half the price which the government demanded from its purchasers.
The fragrance of spices was borne on every breeze; shells of various beautiful forms were thrown up by every tide; tortoiseshell might be had for the trouble of polishing, and ivory for that of hunting the elephant; arrack flowed for any one who would set it running from the tree; canes to make matting and baskets were trodden down from their abundance; the topaz and the amethyst, the opal, the garnet, the ruby, and the sapphire, jet, crystal, and pearls, were strewed as in fairy-land; the jack-wood, rivalling the finest mahogany, ebony, satin-wood, and the finely-veined calaminda, grew like thorns in the thicket; yet the natural proprietors of this wealth, to which the world looked with longing eyes, were half-fed and not clothed; and their English fellow-subjects, located in a far less favourable habitation, were taxed to afford them such meagre support as they had.
The world had rolled back with the Cingalese. Monuments were before them at every step, which showed that their country had been more populous than now, and their forefathers more prosperous than themselves. They were now too many for their food—too many for the labour which their rulers vouchsafed to call for; yet they were but a million and a half on a territory which had sustained in more comfort a much greater number, without taxing a distant nation to give unproductive aid to a puny people, and before the advantages of national interchange had been fully ascertained. There were traces of times, before the English artizan was called upon to contribute his mite to his tawny brother over the sea; before the government complained of the expense of its colony; before murmurs arose about the scanty supply of cinnamon, while the Honourable Company was claiming compensation for an over-supply; before the rulers at Columbo began to be at their wit’s end to find means for keeping up their credit; before the expenditure of the colony so far exceeded its revenue, as that the inquiry began among certain wise ones, where was the great advantage of having a colony which, however rich in name and appearance, cost more than it produced: there were traces of happier times, when the world seemed to have been wiser, however younger, than at present; or when the Cingalese had been under a wiser sway than that which was now calling upon them for perpetual submission and gratitude. The Dutch might have been hard task-masters; but it was now felt that the English were yet more so; and however much submission might be yielded, because it could not be refused, there was small room for gratitude, as any one would have admitted who could have drawn an accurate comparison between the condition of the foreign and the native, the producing and the commercial, population of the western portion of the island during this season of hardship.
The Dutch-built houses, inhabited by foreign agents, displayed all their usual luxuries; carpeted with fragrant mats, gemmed with precious stones, perfumed with spicy oils, and supplied with food and drinks purchased by native produce from foreign lands. The huts of their humbler neighbours, meanwhile, were bare alike of furniture and food, and, for the most part, empty of inhabitants. The natives of eastern countries seem to find consolation in the open air in times of extreme hardship; not only laying their sick on the banks of rivers, but gathering together in hungry groups by the road-side or by the sea-shore, in times of famine, gazing patiently on the food which is carried before their eyes, and waiting for death as the sun goes down. Such were the groups now seen on the shores of the Lake of Columbo, and in many an open space among the spoiled paddy-fields, while the foreigners, from whom they were wont to receive their pittance, were engaged with their curries, their coffee, and their meats from many climes. Thus was it during the day; while at night the distribution of action was reversed. The foreigners slept at ease in their cooled and darkened apartments, or, if they could not rest, had nothing worse to complain of than a mosquito foe, while their native neighbours were silently forming funeral piles along the shore; silently bringing more wood and more from the thickets, as others of their caste dropped dead at length; silently laying out the corpses; silently watching them as they turned to ashes, and placing the limbs decently as they fell asunder; silently ranging themselves so that the funeral fire played in their dark eyes, and shone on their worn and lanky frames; silently waiting till the morning breeze puffed out the last flickering flame, and dispersed the handful of white ashes, which was all that remained of the parent who had murmured his blessing at sunset, or the wife who had whispered her farewell at midnight, or the infant whose breath had parted at the summons of the dawn. Silently were these rites performed; insomuch that any chance-watcher in the neighbouring verandah heard no other interruption to the splash of waters than the crackling of flames, and would not have guessed that bands of patient sufferers were gathered round this fearful sacrifice to the evil spirit of monopoly—a sacrifice as far from appeasing the demon as from testifying to the willing homage of his priests. There were not among the gentle Cingalese any of the fierce passions which this demon commonly delights to unleash among his victims; none of the envy, jealousy, and hatred with which the desperately miserable enhance their desperation and their misery. Instead of jostling one another, these sufferers sat side by side; instead of gnashing their teeth at each other, they were altogether heedless of neighbourhood; instead of inflicting injuries, they merely ceased to confer mutual benefits. No aged man complained of violence, but sank down disappointed, when he found the water-pot—placed for the traveller’s refreshment—empty by the wayside. No wearied woman murmured at being dislodged from the sheltered bench on the bridge; but neither did those, who had niched themselves there to seek forgetfulness in sleep, stir to make way for a fellow-sufferer. No child was driven from its chance meal by a stronger arm than its own; but neither was there a look or a word to spare for the little ones (more tenacious of life than their parents), who crept from their dead mother to their dying father, trying in vain to suck life from the shrunken breasts of the one, and to unclose the fixed eyes of the other. Some who remained in their habitations in the woods, if less destitute, were not less miserable. If the sight and scent of the bread-fruit were too strong for the fortitude of some, they ate under the full conviction that they were exchanging famine for leprosy. Whether the belief in this effect of the fruit was right or wrong, those who believed and yet ate suffered cruelly for the want of rice. If a follower of Brama, in passing a ruin, saw a cow browsing on some pinnacle, and, in a fit of desperation, called the sacred creature down to be made food of, he found himself gnawed by the consciousness of his inexpiable crime, as fearfully as by his previous hunger. An ample importation of rice—such as might always be secured by the absence of restrictions on commerce—would have saved to these the pangs of conscience, till a better knowledge had had time to strike root and ripen for harvest, as it would have spared to others the agonies of hunger while their rice-grounds were awaiting the latter rains, and preparing to become fruitful again in their season. As it was, all were prevented making the most of their own soil from want of capital; and, while rendered dependent on the importation of grain, were denied the means of insuring that importation. By the exorbitant taxation of some of their articles of produce, and the prohibition to sell others to any buyer but the government, the Cingalese were deprived of all chance of securing a subsistence, and of all inducement to accumulate property.
Mrs. Carr did not know that she had ever enjoyed her way of life more, on the whole, than since she had come to Ceylon. She liked lying down for the greater part of the day, and being sure of seeing something beautiful from the verandah when she could exert herself to look abroad from it. She liked being fanned by the punkah, and waited upon by five times as many servants as she wanted, and amused by Alice, and flattered by her husband’s station; none of the trouble of which devolved upon her. But she did not know whether some friends of hers liked the place so well; she thought not, by Mr. Serle’s grave manner, and the new expression of fear and anxiety in Mrs. Serle’s open and happy countenance. Mr. and Mrs. Serle were American missionaries; members of the little band of philanthropists who, setting the example of charity towards their Cingalese brethren, were met and cheered by the open hand of charity at every turn, till they were fairly established in the society and in the hearts of those whom they came to civilize and bless.
“I am glad you did not ask our advice about coming,” observed Mrs. Carr to the missionary’s wife: “we find it very pleasant in Ceylon; but I do not know whether you find it as pleasant as we do; and it would have been a disagreeable thing to have misled you. I am glad you did not ask our advice.”
“Mrs. Serle comes to lead such a different kind of life from yours, my dear,” observed her husband, “that any advice from you could have helped her little. You see and enjoy all the natural advantages of the place, which are very great indeed: Mrs. Serle comes to do what she can towards remedying the misery of the people, which is quite as remarkable in its way.”
“And I beg to say that I enjoy the natural advantages of the place,” replied Mrs. Serle; “I like your Adam’s Peak at sunrise, and your gay insects, and your flowery jungle, and your pine-apples as well as any of you. I do not wish to be the less sensible of these things because the people claim my compassion.”
“Not the less, but rather the more,” observed her husband, “that the misery of the people may be the more quickly remedied. When we find starving men in a paradise, our next business is to find out whose fault it is that they are starving.”