Gold, Sport, and Coffee Planting in Mysore: With chapters on coffee planting in Coorg, the Mysore representative assembly, the Indian congress, caste and the Indian silver question, being the 38 years' experiences of a Mysore planterElliot, Robert H. (Robert Henry)
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Gold, Sport, and Coffee Planting in Mysore: With chapters on coffee planting in Coorg, the Mysore representative assembly, the Indian congress, caste and the Indian silver question, being the 38 years' experiences of a Mysore planter
Elliot, Robert H. (Robert Henry)
Caste -- India; Coffee; Karnataka (India) -- Description and travel; Karnataka (India) -- Politics and government
After discussing the subject of gold stealing with the magistrate, I
called on the manager of the Mysore mine, and afterwards went with my host
to a lawn tennis party at the house of the doctor of the mines, who is
employed by the various companies. He has a comfortable bungalow, which
is at a considerable elevation above the level of the valley, and commands
an extensive view of the surrounding country and of the distant hills.
Above the house, and at some little distance on one side of it, stands the
hospital, and on a knoll just below, the building of the new Roman
Catholic church was in progress, and the walls were nearly finished. From
the doctor's bungalow a good general view of the whole field can be
obtained, and I was particularly struck with the number of buildings to be
seen in all directions. I was told that from this point as many as thirty
tall chimneys can be counted.
There is a great want of water in the field, for purposes connected with
the separation of the gold from the quartz, and tanks are being provided
to store it. I venture to suggest that a considerable distance of the
catchment area on the sides, and especially at the back, of the tanks
should be honeycombed with pits, as the water, which is often largely lost
from falling in heavy deluges, would thus percolate into the ground, and
so find its way into the bed of the tank by degrees. I may mention that a
great effect has been produced in the case of a tank on one of my coffee
estates by thus digging pits to catch water that would otherwise run
directly down into the tank, to be largely lost by the overflow during
heavy rains, and a similar effect has been produced on the property of a
neighbour. In fact, the effect produced by such pits on the supply of
water in tanks is far greater than one could have imagined to be possible,
and I may therefore, in passing, call particular attention to the
advisability of such pits being made near tanks used for agricultural
purposes. On the margins of the tanks, and in parts of the bed where
sufficient soil exists, trees should be planted, with the view of
diminishing evaporation from the surface of the water.
When the railway is completed, soil might easily be brought into the
field oil trucks, and the pits dug for trees should be filled with it. The
planting of trees in and around the field would certainly be beneficial in
many obvious ways, and would improve the climate and probably affect, not
perhaps the amount, but the distribution of the rainfall. I would suggest
that if earth closets were used by the people, and the used earth spread
around the trees, there would be a great improvement in their growth. This
would at once improve the sanitation of the field and beautify it at the
same time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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