eloped by big game shooting, yield real
education, or the leading out and development of the mental resources,
while books provide the individual merely with instruction which has often
a tendency to cramp and even to fossilize the mind.

I have said at the outset, that the journey to India is not the same as it
was in 1855, and that still less is India the same India, and I may
certainly say that still less is Western Mysore the Western Mysore of
1855, except that its beautiful scenery is as beautiful as ever. For our
planting is not like that of Ceylon, where the planter, like the locust,
finds a paradise in front to leave a desert in his rear--a desert of bare
lull sides from which the beautiful forest has been entirely swept away,
while the most valuable constituents of the soil have been washed down to
the river beds. And when standing in 1893 on a lull in my district of
Manjarabad, and looking around, I can see no sign of change in the
landscape from the days of 1855, except that the woodland paths leading
from village to village are much more distinctly marked, owing to the
great increase of labourers employed in the numerous native and European
plantations, which now stretch in an unbroken line along all the western
border of Mysore. And no sign of change is apparent, because all the
coffee is planted either under the shade of the original forest trees, or
under the shade of trees which have been planted to take their place. But
all else is practically and largely changed by the agency of a universal
progress, which has been brought about by British government and the
introduction of British capital, skill, and energy. And this progress, I
am glad to be able to say, has benefited all classes of the community, and
the labouring classes by far the most of all, and the results as regards
those are so striking, so interesting, and so much more widely diffused
than could at first sight be thought possible, and are, as I shall show,
of such vast importance to the finances of the State, that they are well
worthy of special attention. Had the Government been aware of the enormous
financial value to the State of the introduction of English capital, I
feel sure that much greater efforts would have been made to stimulate
European enterprise, and that the progress of India would have been much
accelerated all along the line.

When I started my plantation in 1858, the pay of a labourer was 2 rupees 4
annas (4s. 6d.) a month.