Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 15.pdf/593

 544

character he has acquired in each. The as sistant superintendents of police are the reg istrars. The scheme has proved invaluable in the prevention of one of the commonest forms of burglary, made easy by the con nivance of servants. Alas! here, as elsewhere, familiarity with the white race does not always tend to raise it in the veneration of our brown brothers. The days have gone by in which we could leave the house-door unbarred during the night. Much of the old contentedness and of the old respect for the European has gone, and new wants and excitements—amongst them drinking and gambling—must be satis fied. In a country whose wealth lies so largely in its crops, there is, of course, a continual source of temptation to thieves, not only in the crops when growing, which is scarcely possible for planters to guard, but still more in the harvest when it is being transported from the store to the marker. Take, for instance, the transport of coffee to Colombo, from a plantation in Uva, a dis tance of perhaps two hundred miles, by road, Hver, or either lake or rail. Under the old system, each cartload, which was worth about looo rupees, was entrusted to the sole care of a carter, and each boatload, worth about 10,000 rupees, to that of a crew, of whom, in either case, the senders generally know ab solutely nothing, and in whose honesty they have every cause to disbelieve. The conse quence was that whole cartloads disappeared. In one case the police had the satisfaction of convicting a native agent who had appro priated 400 bushels of coffee valued at 4500 rupees. Less audacious thieves were content with freely helping themselves from the cof

fee bags. The carts were lost sight of for weeks, and the coffee which traveled from Ratnapura to Colombo by river, canal, and lake was at the mercy of the boatmen, who halted for as many days as they saw fit, and called in the aid of their families to manipu late the treasure as they pleased. Thus, throughout its long journey the coffee was subject to pilfering at the hands of drivers, boatmen, and other depredators, who some times stole half the good beans, and either filled up the sacks with inferior ones or made up weight and bulk by swelling the remainder with water. The loads, of course, reached the London market deteriorated in color and value To counteract this mischief a simple and very effective system of cart registration was devised. Along road and river, at regular intervals, police stations were established from Ratnapura to Kalutara, whence the seacoast railway conveys the freight to Colom bo; and each loaded cart or boat is compelled to report itself at those stations. The exact date of arrival and departure of each cart is intimated day by day to the Chamber of Commerce at Colombo. The precious prod uce is under strict care throughout its jour ney, and theft becomes well nigh impossible. The regulation of pilgrimages and the strict sanitation of pilgrims' camps is another of the schemes devised, and excellently en forced, to prevent suffering and mortality, and the too probable development of cholera in the island. The system of police registration of all dogs is so rigidly enforced in the principal towns that Ceylon is comparatively exempt from hydrophobia.