this centre lay malaria-haunted marshes and trackless
forest. Then there came along that Government
which, according to the gospel of the new reviléfsy
is the cause of all famines, and it built a great embankment,
the object of which was to reclaim this
wilderness, by shutting out the flood waters that every
year came in at its gates. Emigrants have poured in
since then, and populated tracts which were totally
uninhabited ; places “ where a man would be afraid to
meet his own brother in the dark.” Dedaye, Wakema,
Maubin, all flourishing centres, are of recent birth.
The State in this enterprise was in advance. of the
people, and at first they were afraid to come in and
be drowned, as they said ; but a start was made, the
first crops yielded a hundred and twenty baskets to
the acre (eighty being a full crop), and the horde came
i’n. The Delta of the Irrawaddy is thus, in, spite of
its limitations, a land of romance. The element of
growth in it is alone sufficient to seize upon the imagination.
For it is growing every day, and new land, the
building-up of ages, is lifting its head above thé level
of the waters. New rivers and waterways are being
created; old ones, swept within easy memory by the
passing ships, are now sealed and ready almost for
the plough. From an amphibious savagery there is
growing up a country that must rank before long
amongst the most prosperous, the most densely peopled,
in the world.
A CANAL IN BASSEIN