work abroad in Cachar. Out of the remaining 75,000 one-half may be counted children under age, and we have therefore a population of only 37,500 men. Again the men in Cachar may be looked upon as the most independent set of natives in India! The larger number of them have each their separate homesteads, surrounded by groves of mangoe, jack, plantain and betel-nut trees, and from five to twenty acres of rice fields adjoining. They live like gentlemen farmers. They drive their own plough through an acre or two of their own land, and have the rest tilled by a class of people below them, who are in themselves perfectly independent, and who simply give half the crop to the landlord for the use of his land.

"Now, the landlords will not work for the tea planters. No not one, even although he holds no more than two acres of land, and has to cultivate all himself.

"He is an aristocrat, he has a title, he calls himself either a Chowdrie, or a Mozumdar, or a Luscur, or a Bhorbooya, and is quite above that sort of thing. Nor will any Pycush or tiller of the soil, who tills five acres, work for the tea planter, simply because they have all that they want, and make more than labourer's wages.

"Planters can therefore employ only the refuse of the Cachar population for simple wages, and there may be about 5,000 men in the district to whom these wages, are at stated periods an inducement but only at stated periods, for as soon as the rice cultivating season sets in, they are off to their small holdings of an acre or half an acre, and prefer labouring for themselves to doing the work of others."

So far as indigenous labour is concerned therefore, Cachar is no better than Assam, and that for the same reason, namely, that the population does not nearly cover the country. It has the advantage however, of being closer to the labour markets of Sylhet and other populous districts of Bengal, a circumstance which has saved the tea planters much of the embarrassment experienced by their Assam brethren. More than two-thirds of the coolies who find work in the Cachar gardens are people of Sylhet. A work of five or six hours, or at most a day, brings them over the boundary line between Sylhet and Cachar, to the gardens. Leaving home in the month of November, they come to the planter with whom they will remain till the following May; they will then go back to look after their own rice crops, and not re-appear till October. It is true that according to this calculation, they work for seven months in the year and are absent only five; but for four out of the seven months, that is, from November to February, the gardens require so little attention that they might almost be left to take care of themselves; whereas the five months during which the coolies are away, are five of the eight months which constitute the manufacturing season. We have already stated that the bonâ fide. work of a tea garden begins after the first shower in March, and continues till October, so that the coolies from Sylhet, and even those had in Cachar, may be depended on for only three months of the season. It may be asked, have the planters done no

thing to remedy this state of things? They have. Men are engaged by them to go out into the villages both of Cachar and Sylhet, making advances of money to labourers with a view to secure their services during the ensuing working season. As an advance is always a temptation to a native, this plan has to a certain extent answered its end, and the services of hundreds of coolies are thus obtained, whose absence would have entailed serious loss to the planters. But even the advance does not always ensure the labour. A coolie will accept it, but when the time to fulfil his engagement arrives, he will, feign sickness; or after working in the garden for a month, he will make it appear that he is too ill to keep on, and for recovery must return to his own dêsh,-for what native ever got well any where but in his own native village? Thus contracts are often eluded, or but partially fulfilled; nevertheless, the advance does secure the services of a great many, and the system will be continued until some surer scheme for providing labour has been devised.

To ensure a permanent supply of labour, the Cachar planters have been trying to establish villages around their gardens. They have rented rice lands from the Government at the usual district rates, and offered them to native settlers on advantageous terms. According to these terms, every ryot is to have a gift of five rupees on settling down, a loan of ten rupees to enable him to purchase cattle with, and a certain extent of land which he is to occupy free of rent for the first three years. But so far as the planter's ultimate aim is concerned, this project has met with little or no success. Ryots most of the planters have,-ryots too, many of whom are honest enough to pay back, by degrees, the ten rupees advanced to them at the period of their settlement; but no wages will tempt them to work in the tea gardens. When they hold their land direct from the Government, they have the use of it free of rent for three years; but rather than pay the land-tax which becomes due after the expiration of the third year, they will remove to some other spot where, of course, they are again exempt from taxation for another term of three years. So they keep moving from place to place every third year, never paying a farthing of rent for the lands on which they raise their crops. And they find it convenient to serve the planters in the same way. Finding that they are not compelled to work in the tea garden, the planter's ryots confine their labour and attention to their own rice fields; within the three years that they occupy the land, free of rent, that is allotted to them, they pay off the ten rupees due to the planter, and at the end of that period, remove and settle down elsewhere. We are not aware that this has been the invariable SEPTEMBER, 1860.

practice, and that there have been no exceptions among these ryots; but the fact that the practice is most common among the Cacharees and the settlers from Sylhet, makes the scheme for the establishment of villages around the factories with a view to obtain labourers for the gardens, very unpromising. The planters are for the most part sanguine men, and they still hope that in time their ryots will regard the tea and the liberal wages more favourably; but we confess we do not share their expectations. The only indirect benefit that has yet accrued from the presence of these ryots, and it may yet become an important benefit, is that the coolies who come to work in the gardens are able to buy rice of them on the spot. It has all along been found needful for the convenience of these men, that the planter should send for supplies of food from Silchar. Besides the expense attending this plan, delays frequently occur in forwarding the supplies, which create dissatisfaction; this trouble and expense will be saved when all the rice and vegetables that are required may be had of the ryots on the estate. But as yet, it has not been found easy to tempt ryots to settle down in the neighbourhood of the factories. As with the Assamese, so with the people of this province; they supply themselves for next to nothing with all they want; why should they labour? The betel-nut trees that grow around their dwellings, yield fruit enough to pay for the rent of their lands, so that all the grain corps are their own, and the profits derived from them are subject to no deduction. What inducement have such men to leave their native district, or if they are Cacharees, to forsake their homesteads, and establish themselves on new land and among strangers? This want of enterprise, this preference of idleness and an anna to labour and a rupee, is one of the "fixed habits" of the people, which the tea planter has to encounter and grapple with at every step.

It may be asked, cannot the Kookees be got to do the work? Their migratory habits are such that they cannot be depended upon. Besides, whatever lighter work they may agree to do in a tea garden, they one and all refuse to hoe the land. The Cachar Tea Company has a large village of them, but from all accounts, their presence is more a loss than a gain to the concern. The village is kept up in the hope, we believe, that they will, in time, be induced to undertake the heavier work of the gardens; but whether this expectation will be realized to any extent, is a doubtful question.

The importation of coolies from Calcutta has also been attempted, but with no very encouraging result. The mortality among the men, from fever and other causes, has hitherto proved a most discouraging circumstance. Of seventy coolies who

were brought to Cachar for one factory, only seven survive. The ratio, though not so alarming as in this instance, has been excessive among the bands imported by other companies as well. Perhaps coolies from Dacca and the low districts of Eastern Bengal, would keep better health than those who come from the West; but large numbers of them go to Calcutta in search of employment on the railways, whilst the comparatively few that remain behind, demand wages far higher than the planters can afford to give. The enormous rise in the price of labour in these parts, may be estimated by the fact that a coolie who four years ago was content to receive three rupees a month, now makes between six and eight. As the importation of labour from the Calcutta market appears now to be absolutely necessary to tea cultivation in Cachar, it becomes a matter of grave importance to inquire what special measures ought to be provided for the health and comfort of the numerous coolies that will have to be entertained.

The loss the planter sustains when he has not enough of coolies during the manufacturing season, is serious. The moment his trees flush, the young leaves must be plucked; and if there are not men enough to do it, the leaf by being kept a day too long on the tree, is apt to deteriorate and become unfit for manufacture. From March to October, the ground must be hoed once every two months, and if there are not men to do it. the trees will refuse their leaf and the out-turn will be next to nothing. These considerations, besides the general one that eleven or twelve thousand acres must not always remain the limit of cultivation in two such provinces as Assam and Cachar where more than four times the existing area ought to be made productive, make it a matter of imperative necessity that the planters should have an adequate supply of labour to rely on. Under these circumstances, the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal has offered his aid in the organization and working of an agency in Calcutta to provide for the importation of coolies to the tea provinces, similar to that which sends labour to the Sugarplanters of the Mauritius. Such an agency offering liberal terms and conducted in good faith, ought to be successful, especially as it will have the advantage of not requiring the coolies to venture on the dreaded kala panee. They would be placed on board our steamers, and have a comfortable trip up their own native rivers, until they reached their several destinations in the tea provinces. Special inducements should be offered to those who have families, to emigrate with their wives and children; for not only would the women and grown children themselves represent so much additional available labour, but their presence

would overcome any reluctance the men might feel in renewing their engagements with the planter after the original term of service had transpired. Owing to the growing competition in the labour market, the planters will have to bid high, and concede not only fair, but liberal terms, without which coolies who can get work nearer home, will not agree to go to a part of the country not only remote, but notoriously unhealthy.

In Cachar, the means of intercommunication between the several factories and "the station," to which all the tea is, in the first instance, sent, present greater perplexities than the subsequent transit to Calcutta. With the exception of the undulating land and hillocks always selected for gardens, the whole country is nothing but marsh and jungle. In some few places, roads have been constructed, in others, elephant-tracks exist; but with these exceptions there are neither highways nor pathways, and a very little of the varied experience one acquires in a single excursion of any extent across country, will suffice to redeem travelling in Cachar from the charge of monotony. Now slowly winding through dense forests whose tangled branches obstinately withstand your progress; now crossing bottomless bogs where every attempt to recover yourself only serves to sink you deeper in the mire; now toiling through marshes infested with leeches and such like agreeable acquaintances; now tottering along crazy wooden bridges thrown over the countless nullahs (streams) that intersect the land; now wading a stream as the only way to get across it, and reaching the other side only to plunge into a fresh swamp-on you move, till you at last espy the planter's

bungalow, and begin to hope, that the heterogeneous experiences of the day, and its diversified perplexities, may close with a little refreshment and rest.

The manufacture in Cachar has not yet become so abundant, as to force the subject of transit to Calcutta on the attention of the planters. The numerous small streams communicating with one another and covering the land with their intricate net-work, offer no facilities for the conveyance of the tea to Silchar. The entire produce of the gardens has to be sent over-land to the station, where it is transferred to the native boats engaged to take it to Calcutta. But with the increase of out-turn, the inconveniences of the present mode of transit, as well from the gardens to Silchar as from Silchar to Calcutta, will be increasingly felt, and capitalists will become unwilling that their produce should be exposed to the serious risk of a tedious river journey of fifteen days or more, in native craft. Since speed and security are essential to all proper means of conveyance, the Cachar planters, we are sure, will soon feel, if they have not