Ten years in Burma

by Julius Smith

There is room for a vast population to make an easy living in the hills of Burma alone. If those fertile hills were in America, they would be all occupied as cattle and horse ranches, if not cultivated. Wherever the forest is thinned or cut away, a great luxuriant growth of grass and bamboos springs up, on which cattle feed and flourish. They can get plenty of grazing the year round in these hills, and there would always be a ready market for beef and for bullocks for plowing.

Among the many natural resources of Burma, there are two that require careful attention. Here we find one of the greatest rice-growing countries of the world. Here also are vast forests of the famous teak wood, that is used so extensively for ship-building and other structures.

Rice-growing is the one line of cultivation that characterizes the land of Burma. In India there are greater rice fields, because the rice lands are more extensive. But in India they cultivate other crops, and this even on the rice land. In India they frequently, if not generally, grow two or more crops on the same land in one year, or different crops on adjacent land at the same season. But the Burman grows one crop only, and that is uniformly rice. He is a rice-grower and a rice-eater. In the plains there is no other grain grown that is generally used for human food. There is a little Indian corn cultivated, but not in sufficient amount to break the force of this general statement.

The rice fields of Burma amount to over six million acres. There are often as many as one hundred bushels of unhusked rice grown on an acre. Of course, the average yield is far below this amount. Yet the aggregate rice crop is enormous. It feeds all Burma, and there are vast quantities shipped to India, China, Europe, and South America. No year since I have been in Burma has there been insufficient rice for her people. If rice of a different variety comes to Burma for the immigrants that are used to the Indian article, there is also much Burma rice shipped annually to various ports in India.

A word should be added as to rice cultivation. Perhaps all readers are aware that rice is grown usually in water, though there is some dry cultivation. The land is inclosed in very small fields, averaging less than one acre, but often not more than one-tenth of that area. There are embankments round all these fields, and several inches of water are kept always on the ground. Sometimes the water is a foot deep. So long as the rice can have a very little of the upper blade out of the water it will flourish. The ground is stirred with a wooden rake like a plow when it is covered with water. The mud is made very fine, and as deep as this mode of cultivation, will stir it. The rice has been sown in nurseries, and when from a foot to fifteen inches high it is pulled up, bound into bundles of approximately one hundred plants each, and taken, usually in boats, to the prepared field, where it is all transplanted by hand. Often the root is divided, so that from one grain there come to be grown several bunches of rice. In appearance a rice field looks very much like a field of oats. The reader will hardly be prepared to believe that it takes nearly twice as long to mature a rice crop under a tropical sun, as it does to grow a field of oats in the northern latitudes, especially in America. The rice is sown in the nursery in May or June, and the ripened grain is not harvested before the last of December or in January. It is all cut with a sickle. I have never seen any one harvesting with any other instrument in Southern Asia. The grain is always threshed under the feet of cattle, and winnowed by hand. An American sees hundreds of ways wherein this crop could be grown more economically, and some missionary will yet introduce modern methods successfully. The missionary is the only man likely to succeed in such a task.

When speaking of the great food-producing industries of Burma, that of fishing should have special prominence. Burma has a vast area of swamps submerged every rainy season, and these are classed as “fisheries,” and a very large revenue is secured from the sale of the fish. The fisherman makes an excellent living, and the people almost universally are able to eat fish with their rice. So long has this been the case that no Burman considers that he has been well fed unless he has fish of some sort with rice every day. Then he shares the characteristic of all Asiatics in desiring much condiment with his rice. He therefore takes the fish, which is of fine flavor and excellent quality when fresh, and rots it, and mixes with it peppers and other spices until it suits his taste and smell, and then feasts! Other less Burmanized people declare that his “gnape,” as he calls this preparation, is simply very rotten fish.

The teak-wood forests, before mentioned, are among the most valuable in the world. This famous wood will not shrink under the most intense sun’s rays, nor will it expand when wet with the rain. It does not warp, and has a smooth grain and works easily. In the tropics, when used for building purposes, it is not eaten by white ants, which destroy almost all other building material in hot countries. The Government has taken hold of this industry, and protects the trees from fires, regulates the cutting, and does all it can to maintain and extend these exceedingly valuable forests. The cutting of the trees, their transport to the sea, and conversion into lumber is one of the greatest organized industries in the country. The amount of money required to carry on this business in the process of cutting the timber from the stump, hundreds of miles inland, gathering it out of the forests, carrying it in rafts to the seaports, and putting it through the great sawmills, to the final disposal to the European and other purchasers, is enormous. The time element is a large one. It takes years to get these logs through the process. I have often desired to know just how long this timber has been waiting or is in transit from the time it was felled. This at least must be several years, for the logs often show signs of hard usage through a long period. They are sometimes cracked and worn as if decades old.

The Elephant at Work

It is in this timber industry that the elephants of Burma are very useful. All travelers visiting Burma have at least seen the elephant at work in the mills of Rangoon. They drag the great logs from the river, place them in position to be guided to the saws, drag away the slabs and squared lumber, pile all these in orderly heaps ready for further handling, and manipulate the logs and ropes and their own chains in a marvelous way. They go in and out of the mills with every part of the great machinery running, and never make a false motion to tramp on a carriage, become entangled in the belting, or allow a whirling saw to touch their precious skins. Why a great beast with such strength, joined to such intelligence and self-possession, will submit to the feeble and often stupid man who sits on his neck, and work for man at all, is a marvel. But the transient visitor only sees the elephant working in the mills. This is only a small part of his task. He does all the heavy dragging of the logs to get them to the river from the forest where they are grown. This is often over the most difficult ground. He will go into a thicket where no other beast can go, where a horse or an ox could not climb at all, or if he did, would be perfectly useless for work. But the elephant goes into these worst places and drags the logs over fallen trees, bowlders, and through mud, not being dismayed by muddy ditches or rocky steeps.