Kanarese language is often of little use, and the native overseers on my
estate have complained that they now often cannot make the labourers
understand them. And this of course is not surprising, as at one moment
the overseer may have to deal with labourers from any one of the villages
between Mysore and the Western Sea, and at another with people from
villages in the Madras Presidency, far away on the route to the Bay of
Bengal. Field after field, and village after village, has thus been
irrigated by that capital for which India thirsts, and which, as we have
seen, produces such wide-spreading social effects on the welfare of the
people, and, consequently, on the resources of the State--enabling land to
be more largely and fully developed, wells to be dug, gardens to be made,
and the people to pay with greater ease the demands of the Government. But
there is yet another point of great importance to notice as regards the
introduction into India of European capital, with its accompanying
effects--effects which largely enhance its value--namely, those arising
from setting the natives practical examples of both method, skill, and
energetic action. I allude to the bearing of these forces upon famine--a
subject well worthy of some passing remarks, more especially because in
Mysore we can furnish proofs of the value in times of famine of having
Europeans settled in the country.

The actual money value of the infuse of English capitalists, and its
bearing on the resources of the State, and in enabling the people the
better to contest with famine and scarcity, is sufficiently apparent, but
it was only when the terrible famine of 1876-77 (which cost Mysore the
loss of about a fifth of its population, an immense sum of money, and
crippled its resources for years) broke out that the value of having a
European agency ready at hand to grapple with famine, and honestly
administer the funds available, was absolutely proved. It would be tedious
to go into this subject at any length, indeed I have not space to do so,