H




50



BURMA



of the delta of the Irawadi, by which fresh silt-beds are raised to the cultivation
level. The town of Thaton, now sixteen miles from the coast and without a sea
approach, was. in historic times, a port. Ships came up to Tenaserim in the
south, the ancient emporium of trade across the Peninsula to Siam, and to
Akauttaung in the north, and probably to Pegu. A mass
of precise data on this subject was collected by the late
Mr. John Merrifield, who came to the conclusion that
Tenaserim had risen fifteen to twenty feet in the course
of the last 300 years. In 1900, ten and a half million acres
were cultivated in Burma. The rice crop was estimated
at three and a half million tons, of which two millions
were exported, worth ;^ 14,000,000. Fallow lands were
estimated at five and a half million acres and arable
waste at twenty-four millions, out of a gross area of
one hundred and one millions. In 1872 a considerable
firm failed over the enterprise of bringing a few thousand
acres of reputed arable waste at Kayasu under cultiva-
tion ; the crops got so much water that they rotted.
The area has lain waste ever since. Most of the waste
land granted to companies has been resumed, on account
of their failure to satisfy the condition of utilising the
land. The conditions which render land suitable for wet
cultivation are less simple than they appear at the first
glance. It is possible that the estimate of the arable waste
is much too high.
