CHAPTER XXVII WHEAT To take, as it were, the full force of the wonder in your face you should come into it out of the desert. On a camel preferably; for there is something in the deep jolting of a camel which gives a penetrative force to impressions—at least until the penetration begins to come from the camel itself-and because the desert never looks so sinister, so unconquerable, as from the back of the only beast who can be trusted to cross it. Then, when you are heart-sick of the yellow gray-green monotony of sand and scrub, of the dust in your teeth and the glare in your eyes, you can appreciate what has been done by the mere spilling of water on this barren soil. Ahead of you, and on either hand, far as the eye can travel from its lofty perch, nothing can be seen but a solid emerald greenness, the greenness of young wheat just opening the ear; of wheat that has never wanted sun nor water, which has been soaked and burnished by three days of rain emerald it is, but with clear breadths of beryl, with deep spaces of malachite; waisthigh, strong and sappy as young shoots of bamboo, an armful of blades to each generous crown of it, and closer than clover in a May meadow. There are no hedges, but here and there lines of young trees have been planted beside the cart tracks and distributing canals, their bare boughs gleaming as they sway in the exhilarating air, and intermittently as one rides along on a horse now, for there are twenty miles more to be covered the dry mud track through the waving greenness is bordered by the intense pink of the wild almond, its blossoms— above the vivid emerald and against the keen blue -looking as though they had been worked in silk upon the sky; or an orchard of cherry trees-the reddish cinnamon of the clear young leaves showing above the snowy tassels-speaks amid the wheat of some more ambitious experiment. The district of which one writes is that which has been converted from sterility by the Chenab Canal, the head works of which have been described already. The ground, which was practically worthless, was acquired by the Government, and when the Canal was completed settlers from poor and congested districts were invited to take up the land. At first it was very difficult to lure the ryot away from his starving farms to these fields of plenty. He was distrustful, he always is distrustful of the benefits offered him by a change of address; but despite his shy beginnings the fame of the new soil spread, and now the Colonisation name of that one from it on the new Officer can take his pick from the eager candidates. The method of one of these hard-worked men is to ride through the villages from which he wants to draw his new tenants, explaining what he has to offer, and threatening that if any proposed colonist be presented to him with a false character he will wipe off the village from his list, so that no should ever be permitted to settle land. Next morning he would go through the village records, which are kept with a completeness space would quite fail one to explain, and thus see how every man had farmed his holding, what sort of enterprise was in him, and how much he might have ever been in debt. He would learn likewise his moral and social character, and be able accurately to judge if the making of a good colonist were in him. Thus he would select, say, a score from a village, some four of whom would be deputed to inspect and report upon the land offered them. If these disapproved of it they might be given a chance of selection elsewhere, but if the report were favourable the colonists moved down into the new district, and the site of a village with its surrounding lands was marked out for them. But in these new settlements no casual occupancy is allowed. The village must be built according to a fixed plan, with a well in the centre, sunk at the colonists' expense, on which the four or more main roads converge. Y |