CHAP. VIII - COLONIZATION

Summary

Connected with the question of the site of the future capital is that of the possibility of the colonization by Englishmen of portions of the peninsula of India.

Hitherto the attempts at settlement which have been made have been mainly confined to six districts—Mysore, where there are only some dozen planters; the Neilgherries proper, where coffee-planting is largely earried on; Oude, where many Europeans have taken land as zemindars, and cultivate a portion of it, while they let out the remainder to natives on the Metayer plan; Bengal, where indigo-planting is gaining ground; the Himalayan valleys, and Assam. Settlement in the hot plains is limited by the fact that English children cannot there be reared, so to the hill districts the discussion must be confined.

One of the commonest of mistakes respecting India consists in the supposition that there is available land in large quantities on the slopes of the Himalayas. There are no Himalayan slopes; the country is all straight up and down, and for English colonists there is no room—no ground that will grow anything but deodars, and those only moderately well. The hot sun dries the ground, and the violent rains follow, and cut it through and through with deep channels, in this way gradually making all the hills both steep and ribbed.