he English?

During the last day I saw a great many poppy plantations. They
present a remarkable appearance; the leaves are fatty and shining,
the flowers large and variegated. The extraction of the opium is
performed in a very simple, but exceedingly tedious manner. The yet
unripe poppy heads are cut in several places in the evening. A
white tenacious juice flows out of these incisions, which quickly
thickens by exposure to the air, and remains hanging in small tears.
These tears are scraped off with a knife in the morning, and poured
into vessels which have the form of a small cake. A second inferior
quantity is obtained by pressing and boiling the poppy heads and
stems.

In many books, and, for instance, in Zimmerman's "Pocket-Book of
Travels," I read under this head that the poppy plants reached a
height of forty feet in India and Persia, and that the capsules were
as large as a child's head, and held nearly a quart of seeds. This
is not correct. I saw the finest plantations in India, and
afterwards also in Persia, but found that the plants were never more
than three, and, at the most, four feet high, and the capsule about
as large round as a small hen's egg.

8th February. Madopoor, a wretched village at the foot of some low
mountains. Today also we passed through terrible ravines and
chasms, which like those of yesterday, were not near the mountains,
but in the middle of the plains. The sight of some palms was, on
the contrary, agreeable, the first I had seen since I left Benares;
however, they bore no fruit. I was still more surprised to see, in
a place so destitute of trees and shrubs, tamarind, and banyan or
mango trees planted singly, which, cultivated with great care,
flourish with incomparable splendour and luxuriance. Their value is
doubled when it is known that under each there is either a well or a
cistern.

9th February. Indergur, a small, unimportant town. We approached
today very much nearer to the low mountains which we had already
seen yesterday. We soon found ourselves in narrow valleys, whose
outlets appeared to be closed with high, rocky wells. Upon some of
the higher mountain peaks stood little kiosks, dedicated to the
memory of the Suttis. The Suttis are those women who are burnt with
the corpse of their husbands. According to the statement of the
Hindoos, they are not compelled to do so, but their relations insult
and neglect them when they do not, and they are driven ou