e to his knowledge, on pain
of being prohibited from visiting the prison.

CHAPTER XIII.

ON THE BORDER LAND.

Besides the 25,000,000 who constitute the actual destitute and criminal
population, we estimate that at a very low computation there are
25,000,000 who are on the border-land, who are scarcely ever in a
position to properly obtain for themselves and for their families the
barest necessities of existence. I do not say that they are wholly
submerged, but they pass a sort of amphibious existence, being part of
the time under water and part of the time on land,--some part of their
life being spent in the most abject poverty, and some part of it in
absolute starvation--positively for the time submerged, and liable at
any moment to be lastingly engulfed. These are the classes whose income
never rises above five rupees a month, while more frequently it is under
four rupees.

On one farm, concerning which we have detailed information, where the
rent of the land is unusually low, the soil good and well irrigated,
where loans can be got at a merely nominal interest, the cultivators,
with the additional help of occasional cooly work, did not average in
their earnings four rupees a month, some having to keep a family on
three and a half, while if a bullock died, or a plough had to be
procured, it meant positive hunger and increased indebtedness to supply
those needs.

The fact is that in many districts there is not only an increase of
population to be sustained by a constantly narrowing area of cultivated
land, but the land itself is deteriorating through the unendurable
pressure put upon it. As the forests grow more distant through being
used up for timber and fuel, wood becomes dearer. The manure which ought
to go upon the land is therefore by necessity consumed for fuel. The
ground in consequence becomes impoverished. As the struggle for
existence becomes fiercer, the people are unable to let their land
periodically lie fallow, so the crops grow lighter. Again, the ryot is
not only unable properly to feed himself, but his bullocks share a
similar fate. The feeble animals can only draw a plough which merely
scratches the surface of the ground. Furthermore, as the population
increases the land is divided into smaller and smaller holdings. The
struggle against the advancing tide of adversity cannot be maintained.
Inch by inch the tide rolls up, pushing the border-landers closer and
closer upon the black