Colombo's Splendid Harbour.

Progress, Volume II, Issue I, 1 November 1906, Page 29

Colombo's Splendid Harbour.

Colombo harbour has been constructed at the expense, and under the direct supervision, of the Ceylon Government. The foundation stone of the famous south-west breakwater was laid by King Edward when, as Pnnce of Wales, he visited India in 1875. This breakwater, which is fourteen hundred yards long, was completed in 1885 at a cost of £700,000; but before it was finished designs were prepared for a further extension of the works, which were to include the construction of a north-east breakwater three hundred and thirty yards long, and a detached island breakwater nine hundred yards long, situated between the two others. While the work was in progress it was decided to construct a graving dock, the cost of which, including additions when complete, would amount to £348,700. The dock, which is eighty -five feet broad, and has a depth at high water of thirty-two feet, will, when finished at the end of this year, be larger than any of the docks at Bombay, Singapore, or Hong-kong, none of which exceeds five hundred feet. It will take the largest ship afloat m the Navy, not excluding the Dreadnought. It may here be interesting to give a few facts indicative of the growing prosperity of the island under Crown Colony rule. A salient fact is the growth of the revenue, now amounting approximately to £2,100,000, which has increased more than a hundred per cent, during the past fifteen years by regularly maintained leaps and bounds. Although extensive public works have been undertaken by the Ceylon Government, including, besides the harbour works at Colombo, the construction of five hundred and sixty miles of State railways, the public debt of the colony does not exceed £s 000,000, and under existing arrangements this will be entirely extinguished in the year 1948 The debt works out at about £1 8s per head of the population, as compared with £54 us in Australia, £68 10s. 111 New Zealand, and £13 us. in Canada The unexampled rise in revenue, with the constantly recurring surplus of receipts over expenditure, is doubtless due to the thrifty system of administration of the Ceylon Government, which bears favourable comparison with the speculative policy of the selfgoverning Colonies, whose Governments are financially independent of Colonial Office control.