We have been travelling through many miles of cultivated land on a comfortable railway; yet in this same district, in the early nineteenth century, our soldiers on the march to Kandy had to hew a path through the jungle and sling the heavy guns from tree to tree. The railway now extends from one end of the island to the other; off the main routes we find good roads on which 60 coaches run; here is one of them carrying the mails, though its appearance does not suggest very rapid or comfortable travelling. Along many of the chief routes motor-cars now run. Improved means of communication have opened up the interior to the planters and enabled them to reach foreign markets with their products, and have given us that effective control of the whole island which was never attained by the Portuguese or Dutch. The history and progress of Ceylon under British rule is bound up with the making of roads and the building of bridges. With the coming of the road and the railway the elephant has declined in importance, though he is one of the most valuable products of the jungle and one of the oldest articles of export. Elephants still exist in large numbers in the island, but they are for the most part kept by the native chiefs for ornamental and ceremonial purposes, especially in connexion with religious processions. Here is a picture of 61 the last great drive; in the background are the wild elephants just driven into the enclosure, while those in the foreground are tame and trained to assist in reducing the new captures to order. The wealth and progress of Ceylon depend upon its crops, and the crops can neither be grown nor marketed without means of transport; but the first condition of growth in a tropical region is the supply of water. We have seen how the early kings built great tanks or reservoirs for irrigation in the drier districts of the north, so that the land could support a large population. After the Tamil invasions these great works fell into decay and became choked with jungle; native villages were even built inside the old embankments. The Government is now reviving the policy of the past rulers, and as more and more of the irrigation works are restored the waste land of the north will be reclaimed and the face of the country will change. At present, though Ceylon is purely agricultural, with no manufacturing industries and only a little mining for gems and plumbago, yet the food for the towns and for the coolies on the plantations is brought over the sea. This is an unnatural state of affairs; with proper use of its great resources the island should be able to feed itself.