NOMADIC CULTIVATION. 527 A vinces a surplus profit was realized over working expenses. small forest revenue is also obtained from tracts in Ajmere and in Baluchistan, but not sufficient, up to 1883, to cover the expenses of the Department. Total forest expenditure in 1882-83, £577,726, showing a surplus of £386,133. Average forest revenue for ten years ending 1882-83, £703,424 per annum; average expenditure, £467,624; average surplus, £235,800. But the above figures fail to exhibit the true working of the Forest Department, which is gradually winning back for India the fee-simple of her forest wealth, when it was on the point of being squandered beyond the possibility of redemption. cultivation. The practice of nomadic cultivation by the hill tribes may Nomadic conveniently be described in connection with forest conservation, of which it is the most formidable enemy. In all the great virgin forests of India, in Arakan, on the north-east Its area. frontier of Assam and Chittagong, throughout the Central Provinces, and along the line of the Western Ghats, the aboriginal tribes raise their crops of rice, cotton, and millets by a system of nomadic tillage. A similar method has been found in Madagascar; and, indeed, from its simplicity and its appropriateness, it may fairly be regarded the most primitive form of agriculture followed by the human race. Known as taungya in Burma, júm on the north-east frontier, dahya in Central India, kil in the Himálayas, and kumári in the Western Gháts, it is practised without material differences by tribes of the most diverse origin. The essential features of such husbandry are the burning Its variedown of a patch of forest, and sowing the crop with little or no ties. tillage in the clearing thus formed. The tribes of the Bombay coast break up the cleared soil with a sort of hoe-pick and spade, or even with the plough; in other parts of India, the soil is merely scratched, or the seed scattered on the surface without any cultivation. In some cases, a crop is taken off the same clearing for two or even three years in succession; but more usually the tribe moves off every year to a fresh field of operations. Every variety of implement is used, from the billhook, used alike for hewing the jungle and for turning up the soil, to the plough. Every degree of permanence in the cultivation may be observed, from a one-year's crop to the stage at which an aboriginal tribe, such as the Kandhs, visibly passes from nomadic husbandry to regular tillage. To these nomad cultivators the words rhetorically used by Tacitus of the primitive Germans are strictly applicable Forestclearing by fire: -Arva per annos mutant; et superest ager. The wanton destruction wrought by them in the forest is incalculable. In addition to the timber-trees deliberately burned down to clear the soil, the fire thus started not unfrequently runs wild through the forest, and devastates many square miles. Wherever timber has any value from the proximity of a Restraints market, the first care of the Forest Department is to prohibit these fires, and to assign heavy penalties for any infringement of its rules. The success of a year's forest operations is mainly estimated by the degree in which the reserves have been saved from the flames. on it. Merits of nomadic tillage. Irrigation. But vast tracts of country yet remain in which it would be equally useless and impossible to place restraints upon nomad cultivation. The system yields a larger return for the same amount of labour than permanent plough-husbandry. A virgin soil, manured many inches deep with ashes, and watered by the full burst of a tropical rainfall, returns forty and fifty-fold of rice, which is the staple grain thus raised. In addition to rice, Indian corn, millet, oil-seeds, and cotton, are sometimes grown in the same clearing, the seeds being all thrown into the ground together, and each crop ripening in succession at its own season. Except to the eyes of a forest officer, a patch of nomadic tillage is a very picturesque sight. Men, women, and children all work together with a will, for the trees must be felled and burned, and the seed sown, before the monsoon breaks. Save on the western coast and the Ghats (where the plough is occasionally used), the implement generally employed for all purposes is the dáo or hill-knife, which performs the office alike of axe, hoe, dibbler, and sickle. In a tropical country, where the rainfall is capricious in its incidence and variable in its amount, the proper control of the water-supply becomes one of the first cares of Government. Its expenditure on irrigation works may be regarded as an investment of the landlord's capital, by which alone the estate can be rendered profitable. Without artificial irrigation, large tracts of country would lie permanently waste, while others could only be cultivated in exceptionally favourable seasons. Irrigation is to the Indian peasant what high cultivaIts function tion is to the farmer in England. It augments the produce of his fields in a proportion far larger than the mere interest upon the capital expended. It may also be regarded as an insurance against famine. When the monsoon fails for one or two seasons in succession, the cultivator of 'dry lands' has no in India, INDIAN IRRIGATION AREAS. 529 hope; while abundant crops are raised from the fortunate fields commanded by irrigation works. This contrast was painfully realized in Southern India during the terrible years of 1876 to 1878, the limit between famine and plenty being marked by the boundaries of the irrigated and non-irrigated areas. It would, however, be an error to conclude that any outlay will absolutely guarantee the vast interior of the peninsula from famine. Much, indeed, can be done, and much is being done, during year by year, to store and distribute the scanty and irregular water-supply of this inland plateau. But engineering possibilities are limited, not only by the expense, but by the unalterable laws of nature. A table-land, with only a moderate rainfall, and watered by few perennial streams, broken by many hill ranges, and marked out into no natural drainage basins, can never be completely protected from the vicissitudes of the Indian seasons. famine, areas. Irrigation is everywhere dependent upon the two supreme Irrigation The sandy considerations of water-supply and land-level. desert, which extends from the hills of Rájputána to the basin of the Indus, is as hopelessly closed to irrigation, from its almost entire absence of rainfall, as is the confused system of hill and valley in Central India, with its unmanageable levels. Farther west, in the Indus valley, irrigation becomes possible, and in no part of India has it been conducted with greater perseverance and success. The entire Province of Sind, and Sind. several of the lower Districts of the Punjab, are absolutely dependent upon the floods of the Indus. Sind has been compared to Egypt, and the Indus to the Nile; but the conditions of the Indian Province are much the less favourable of the two. In Sind, the average rainfall is barely 10 inches in the year; the soil is a thirsty sand; worst of all, the river does not run in confined banks, but wanders at its will over a wide valley. The rising of the Nile is a beneficent phenomenon, which can be depended upon with tolerable accuracy, and which the industry of countless generations has brought under control for the purposes of cultivation. The inundation of the The uncon Indus is an uncontrollable torrent, which sometimes does as trollable much harm as good. Indus. Broadly speaking, no crop can be grown in Sind except under Irrigation in Sind, irrigation. The cultivated area of over two million acres may 1877-83. be regarded as entirely dependent upon artificial water-supply, although not entirely on State irrigation works. The water is drawn from the river by two classes of canals—(1) inundation channels, which only fill when the Indus is in flood; and VOL. VI. 2 L Irrigation (2) perennial channels, which carry off water by means of dams in Sind, at all seasons of the year. The former are for the most part the work of ancient rulers of the country, or of the cultivators themselves; the latter have been constructed since the British conquest. In both cases, care has been taken to utilize abandoned beds of the river. Irrigation in Sind is treated as an integral department of the land administration. In in 1877; 1876-77, about 900,000 acres were returned as irrigated from works for which capital and revenue accounts are kept. The chief of these are the Ghár, Eastern and Western Nará, Sukkur (Sakhar), Phuleli, and Pinyari Canals; the total receipts were about £190,000, almost entirely credited under the head of land revenue. In the same year, about 445,000 acres were irrigated from works for which revenue accounts only are kept, yielding about £75,000 in land revenue. The total area usually irrigated' in Sind was returned in 1880 at about 1,800,000 acres, out of a cultivated area of 2,250,000 acres. 1883. The actual area cultivated by means of canal irrigation in Sind in 1882-83 was 1,673,293 acres, including jagír or revenuefree lands; the area assessed for Government revenue being 1,508,292 acres. The gross assessed revenue from all sources amounted to £294,898, and the maintenance charges to £135,118, leaving a net revenue of £159,780. The net actual receipts from productive irrigation works returned 4:25 per cent., and those from ordinary irrigation works, 12.95 per cent. on the capital outlay incurred up to the end of the year. Total capital outlay up to the end of 1882-83, £958,012, of which £623,267 had been expended on productive works, and £334,745 on ordinary irrigation works. Irrigation In the Bombay Presidency, irrigation is conducted on a comin Bombay, paratively small scale, and mainly by private enterprise. Along the coast of the Konkan, the heavy local rainfall, and the annual flooding of the numerous small creeks, permit rice to be grown without artificial aid. In Gujarát (Guzerát) the supply is drawn from wells, and in the Deccan from tanks; but both of these are liable to fail in years of deficient rainfall. Government has now undertaken a few comprehensive schemes of irrigation in Bombay, conforming to a common type. The head of a hill valley is dammed up, so as to form an immense reservoir, and the water is then conducted over the fields by channels, in some cases of considerable length. In 1876-77, the total area in Bombay (excluding Sind) irrigated from Government works was about 180,000 acres, yielding a revenue of about £42,000. In the same year, the expenditure 1877. IRRIGATION IN THE PUNJAB. 531 on irrigation (inclusive of Sind) was £65,000 under the head in the In some parts of the Punjab, irrigation is only one degree Irrigation. less necessary than in Sind, but the sources of supply are more Punjab, numerous. In the northern tract, under the Himalayas, and 1879-84. in the upper valleys of the Five Rivers, water can be obtained by digging wells from 10 to 30 feet below the surface. In the south, towards Sind, 'inundation channels' are usual. The upland tracts which rise between the basins of the main rivers are now in course of being supplied by the perennial canals of the Government. According to the returns for 1878-79, out 1879. of a grand total of 23,523,504 acres under cultivation, 5,340,724 acres were irrigated by private individuals, and 1,808,005 acres by public 'channels;' total area under irrigation, 7,148,729 acres, or 30 per cent. of the cultivated area. The three principal Government works in the Punjab are the Western Jumna Canal, the Bárí Doáb Canal, and the Sirhind, The three the main branch of which, and some of its distributaries, were great Punjab opened in November 1882. An account of each of these works Canals. is given in separate articles in The Imperial Gazetteer of India.1 Up to the close of 1877-78, the capital outlay on the three great Punjab Canals was £3,645, 189; the total income in that year was £263,053, of which 171,504 was classified as direct, and £91,549 as indirect; the total revenue charges on works in operation were £224,316, of which £146,419 was for maintenance, and £77,897 for interest, thus showing a surplus of £38,737. On the Western Jumna Canal, taken singly, the net profit was £83,112 in 1877-78. By the end of 1883-84, the gross revenue from the Bári Irrigation Doab and Western Jumna Canal, together with the Indus and in the Punjab, Sutlej Inundation Canals, amounted to £428,416, and the 1883-84. 1 See articles JUMNA CANAL, Eastern and Western, BARI DOAB CAnal, SIRHIND CANAL, in The Imperial Gazetteer of India. |