Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/778

754 754 INDIA [AGRICULTURE. hibit these fires, and to assign heavy penalties for any infringement of its rules. The success of a year s operations is mainly estimated by the degree in which the reserves have been saved from the name. But vast tracts of country yet remain in which it would be equally useless and impossible to place restraint upon nomad cul tivation, which is admitted to yield a larger profit than ordinary cultivation with the plough. A virgin soil, manured many inches deep with ashes and watered by the full burst of a tropical rain fall, 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 jum cultivation 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. frriga- Irrigation is everywhere dependent upon the two supreme tion. considerations of water supply and land level. The sandy desert that extends from the hills of Rajputana to the basin of the Indus is more absolutely closed to irrigation than the confused system of hill and valley in Central India. 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 hardly less 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 j but, in truth, the case of the Indian province is the less favourable of the two. In Sind the average rainfall is barely 10 inches in the year, the soil is a thirsty sand, and, above 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, whose effects can be calculated with tolerable precision, and which the in dustry of countless generations has brought under control for the purposes of cultivation. In Sind the inundation is an uncontrolled torrent, which oftentimes does as much harm as good. Broadly speaking, no crop can be grown in Sind except under irrigation, and therefore the total culti vated area of about 3 million acres may be regarded as entirely dependent upon artificial water-supply. The sup ply is derived from the river by two main classes of canals (1) inundation channels, which only fill when the Indus is in flood, and (2) perennial channels, which carry off water by means of dams 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 channels of the river. It is impossible to present a complete view of the results of irrigation, for in some provinces, as in Sind, it is treated as a department of land administration, while in others it is almost entirely conducted by private enterprise. In 1876-77 about 900,000 acres in Sind were returned as irrigated from works for which capital and revenue accounts are kept, the chief being the Ghar, Eastern and Western Nara, Sakhar (Sukkur), Phuleli, and Pinyari ; 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 of which revenue accounts only are kept, yielding about 75,000 in land revenue. Throughout the remainder of the Bombay presidency irrigation is conducted on a comparatively small scale, and mainly by private enterprise. In the Concan, along the coast, the heavy local rain fall and the annual flooding of the numerous small creeks permit rice to be grown without artificial aid. In Guzerat the supply is drawn from wells, and in the Deccan from tanks ; but both these are liable to fail in years of deficient rainfall. Government has now undertaken a few comprehensive schemes of irrigation, which mostly conform to a common type damming up the end of a hill valley so as to form an immense reservoir, and then conducting the water over the fields by channels, which are 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 total expenditure on irrigation (inclusive of Sind) was 235,000, 65,000 under the head of extraordinary and 170.000 of ordinary outlay. In some parts of the Punjab irrigation is only one degree less necessary than in Sind, but the sources of supply are more nume rous. In the northern tract, under the Himalayas, and in the upper valleys of the rivers, water can be obtained by digging wells from 10 to 30 feet below the surface. In the south, towards Sind, in undation channels are usual ; while the upland tracts that 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 1877-78, out of a grand total of 22,640,894 acres under cultivation, 5,000,481 were irrigated by private individuals and 1,618,854 by public channels, giving a total under irrigation of 6,619,335 acres, or 29 per cent of the cultivated area. The principal Government works are the Western Jumna canal, the Bari Doab canal, and the Sirhind, the last of which, with the largest expenditure of all, is still incomplete. Up to the close of 1877-78 the total outlay had been 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 alone the net profit was 83,112. The North-Western Provinces present in the great dodb, or high land between the Ganges and the Jumna, a continuation of the physical features to be found in the Upper Punjab. The local rain fall, indeed, is higher, but before the days of artificial irrigation occasional deficiency repeatedly resulted in terrible famines. It is in this tract that the British Government has been perhaps most successful in averting the calamity of drought. In Sind irrigation is an absolute necessity ; in Lower Bengal it may be regarded almost as a luxury ; but in the great river basins of Upper India it serves the twofold object of saving the population from the vicissitudes of the season and of introducing more valuable crops and a higher stage of agriculture. Concerning private irrigation from wells in the North-Western Provinces no information is available. The great Government works are the Ganges canal, the Eastern Jumna canal, the Agra canals, and the Lower Ganges canal, the last of which is not yet complete. Up to the close of 1877-78 the total outlay had been 5,673,401. The gross income in that year was 438,136, of which 337,842 was derived from water rates and 100,294 from enhanced land revenue ; the work ing expenses amounted to 143,984, leaving 294,152 for surplus profits, or 677 per cent, on the total capital expended on works in operation. The total area irrigated was 1,461,428 acres, of which more than two-thirds were supplied by the Ganges canal. Of the total area, 415,659 acres were under wheat and 139,374 under sugar-cane. Into Oudh no irrigation works have yet been introduced by Government. A tolerable local rainfall, the annual overflow of the rivers, and an abundance of low-lying swamps combine to furnish a water supply that is ample in all ordinary years. According to the settlement returns, out of a total cultivated area of 8,276,174 acres, 2,957,397 acres, or nearly 36 per cent. , are irrigated by private individuals ; but this figure must include low lands watered by natural overflow. Throughout the greater part of Bengal there is no demand for artificial irrigation, but the solicitude of Government has undertaken to construct works in those exceptional tracts where experience has shown that occasional drought is to be feared. In the lower valleys of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, and along the deltaic seaboard, flood is a more formidable enemy than drought, and embankments there take the place of canals, the Public Works Department has altogether about 2800 miles of embankments under its charge, upon which 79,105 was expended in 1877-78, either as direct outlay or in advances to landowners. The broad strip of northern Bengal and Behar, stretching between the Himalayas and the Ganges, is also rarely visited by drought ; though, when drought does come, the excessive density of the population brings the danger of famine very near. In Saran alone it has been found necessary to carry out a comparatively small scheme for utilizing the discharge of the river Gandak. The great irrigation works in Bengal are two in number, and belong to two different types. (1.) In the delta of Orissa an extensive system of canals has been constructed on the pattern of those lower down on the Coromandel coast, which are intended to avert the danger of both drought and flood, and also to be useful for navigation. In average seasons, i.e., in five yearn out of six, the local rainfall is sufficient for the rice crop, which is there the sole staple of cultivation ; and therefore it is not to be expected that these canals will be directly remunerative. But on the other hand, if they save the province from a repetition of the disastrous year 1865-66, the money will not have been expended in vain. (2.) In South Behar the flood discharge of the Son has been intercepted, after the system of engineering followed in the North-West, so as to irrigate a comparatively thirsty strip of land extending along the south bank of the Ganges, where distress has ere now been severely felt. In this case also, the expenditure