網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

Collectors were not entirely in accord, moved more slowly in the Madras Presidency, and the Government was content as a beginning to make use of the services of Gibson, the Bombay Government having accorded him permission to visit Madras to give advice on the management of the forests. In Canara, Blane, the Collector, was interesting himself keenly in the matter of the preservation of the forests, and Gibson paid several visits there and endeavoured to introduce his views, more especially with reference to the Kumri cultivation.

This question had been first taken up by a former Collector, Mr. Blair, who in 1843 issued a proclamation directing that five valuable kinds of timber, viz. teak, pún, blackwood, jack and sandal should be preserved in the Government forests. That proclamation, Blane stated, had remained a dead letter, both with timber contractors and the Kumri cutters. The plea was put forward that the materials were cut in private forests. To dispel this idea Blane directed that when a jungle was claimed as private property the right must be established before cutting took place. It was then contended, and in certain localities perhaps with some reason, that the felling of the jungles had diminished the prevalence of fever and was therefore of advantage to the community. To meet this argument Blane confined his prohibition to the felling of the five principal species, allowing the rest of the species to be cut save in accessible forests on river banks and near the seacoast where fellings, except in the case of wood required for fuel purposes, were prohibited. These recommendations on the part of the Collector were assented to by the Board, the Collector being authorised to restrict Kumri cultivation to such places and to such an extent as might in his opinion be expedient for the preservation of the forests and the general welfare of the Province. This matter was again reviewed after Cleghorn's appointment as Conservator in 1856, when it was considered from the point of view of the forests of Malabar and other parts, as well as Canara.

Probably the chief reason which finally induced the Madras Government to appoint their own Conservator of Forests was the alarming decrease which had become apparent in the supplies of first-class teak in the old Malabar Forests from which it had practically all been cut out during the preceding half century. Reports stated that there was still an abundance of teak in Northern Canara, but only a small proportion of it was of the first-class-probably not more than one log in eight

of those brought to Sedashigur. In Travancore and Cochin there was still much more teak of large size, but these were Native States. It was owing to the decrease in supplies of teak from Malabar that attention had been turned to the Anaimalai Forests in Coimbatore. The operations carried out in these forests will now be glanced at.

The Anaimalai Forests. In a previous chapter mention has been made of Cotton's request that an officer should be deputed to explore and report on the Anaimalai Forests. Lieutenant Michael was the officer deputed for this work, and as an outcome of his investigations a settlement of the Colengode and Cochin boundaries was arrived at. Cotton was able to report the following number of good teak trees standing in the forest :

In the Cochin disputed territory

In the Colengode disputed territory
In the Government territory

[ocr errors]

107,000 trees.

[ocr errors]

28,000

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

61,000

[ocr errors]
[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors]

Minutes were written on the subject by Mr. D. Elliot, Member of Council, and by the Governor, Sir H. Pottinger, and in February, 1850, the Government sanctioned Michael's services being retained. In February, 1851, he was sent to Moulmein to learn the methods of dealing with heavy timber; in December, 1853, to the Canara Forests; and in 1854 he was formally appointed Superintendent of the Anaimalai Forests. The report of the working of the Anaimalai Forests given below only deals with the extraction of timber and the construction of roads, and makes no reference to forest conservancy. Michael was in charge of this work, and he had the credit of negotiating the lease of valuable teak forests from the Numbadi of Colengode.

In 1850 it was decided to work the Government Anaimalai Forests, including the contiguous forests rented from the Colengode Numbadi, by departmental agency. The Report on the working of these forests between 1850 and 1854 is of considerable interest, since it throws light on the methods of extraction in force at the time and indicates that the troubles and vicissitudes which beset this class of work in the Indian Forests were not far different seventy years ago from those experienced by the present-day Forest Officer.

The original estimates under which the sanction of Government to the operations was given were apparently drafted by

Major F. C. Cotton, Civil Engineer, 7th Division. Michael was appointed officiating Superintendent of the Anaimalai Forests, and the three reports to be noticed were submitted by him in the years 1852, 1853 and 1854 respectively, the first report being addressed to Major Cotton, the other two to Mr. E. B. Thomas, Collector of Coimbatore.

The forests to be worked were situated on a hilly tableland with a ghát dropping to the plains below. The preliminary work necessitated opening out a cart road from the top of the ghát through the forest, in preparing a slipway from the top to the foot of the ghát, and a second road from the latter point to Mungara, from whence the timber was floated down to the coast at Ponany, and the bridging of one or two rivers.

The floating work depended upon the freshets in the rivers resulting from the two monsoons in October and June or July. The working season in the forests, felling and carting and so forth, ended with the close of March, by which time both water and forage, with the arrival of the hot season, failed to prove sufficient for the requirements of the workmen and the carters' cattle.

One of the most interesting features of Michael's first Report is the allusion to the effort now being made to replace in the forest the wasteful use of the axe in all felling and conversion work by the saw. Through the centuries during which the Indian Forests had suffered at the hands of the people and later from the depredations of the timber contractor, the saw was unknown. The whole of the work was done from first to last with the axe, with a waste of probably at least 50 per cent of the timber of every tree felled. The difficulties encountered in endeavouring to introduce the change amongst a people so conservative as the natives of India are well depicted in this Report; and as is so often the case in improvements of this nature, arguments were brought forward in favour of the old method which were not so easy to meet.

It had been hoped to obtain a sufficient number of sawyers to carry out the whole of the work in the forests from the start, so far at least as the material for the Bombay Dockyard was concerned. "In this," says Michael, "I was greatly disappointed, for the results of all my experiments proved that the quantity of sound planks, adapted for the Dockyard, obtained by sawing, was so small when compared with the quantity of rejected timber that it will be many years ere we can hope to procure a sufficiency of sawyers to cut 2000 planks

[graphic][merged small][merged small]
« 上一頁繼續 »