Item 68 - Letter from Leonard Woolf to R.C. Trevelyan

Mannar, Ceylon. - Was 'delighted' to read Trevy's description of the [Apostles?] dinner. The Pearl Fishery did him 'no harm' [see 17/67], though it was 'pure Hell... with no sleep and indescribable smells'. After returning to Jaffna, he has come out to Mannar as acting Assistant Government agent for a month; it is a 'curious', remote place, where he there are 'no white people' but himself... rather like solitary confinement, as there is of course no one to speak to at all'. Has bought a horse and goes riding, but otherwise only works and reads. Has little to do 'as the people are sterile and dying out and would have died out long ago but for our beneficial rule'. There is said currently to be much death due to 'starvation owing to drought'; the government has 'opened Relief Works on roads', but since many of the population are high caste, whose 'ancestors never carried earth on their heads', they 'therefore sit down and say they prefer to die of starvation' rather than do so; he thinks they are 'quite right', and asks whether Trevy agrees.