ich, during the
growth of the crop, in the rainy season between the months of October and
March,* are for the most part overflowed to the depth of six inches or a
foot, beyond which latter the water becomes prejudicial. Level marshes,
of firm bottom, under a moderate stratum of mud, and not liable to deep
stagnant water, are the situations preferred; the narrower hollows,
though very commonly used for small plantations, being more liable to
accidents from torrents and too great depth of water, which the
inhabitants have rarely industry enough to regulate to advantage by
permanent embankments. They are not however ignorant of such expedients,
and works are sometimes met with, constructed for the purpose chiefly of
supplying the deficiency of rain to several adjoining sawahs by means of
sluices, contrived with no small degree of skill and attention to levels.

(*Footnote. In the Transactions of the Batavian Society the following
mention is made of the cultivation of rice in Java. The padi sawa is sown
in low watered grounds in the month of March, transplanted in April, and
reaped in August. The padi tipar is sown in high ploughed lands in
November, and reaped in March (earlier in the season than I could have
supposed.) when sown where woods have been recently cut down, or in the
clefts of the hills (klooven van het gebergte) it is named padi gaga.
Volume 1 page 27.)

In new ground, after clearing it from the brushwood, reeds, and aquatic
vegetables with which the marshes, when neglected, are overrun, and
burning them at the close of the dry season, the soil is, in the
beginning of the wet, prepared for culture by different modes of working.
In some places a number of buffaloes, whose greatest enjoyment consists
in wading and rolling in mud, are turned in, and these by their motions
contribute to give it a more uniform consistence as well as enrich it by
their dung. In other parts less permanently moist the soil is turned up,
either with a wooden instrument between a hoe and a pickaxe, or with the
plough, of which they use two kinds; their own, drawn by one buffalo,
extremely simple, and the wooden share of it doing little more than
scratch the ground to the depth of six inches; and one they have borrowed
from the Chinese, drawn either with one or two buffaloes, very light, and
the share more nearly resembling ours, turning the soil over as it passes
and making a narrow furrow. In sawahs however the surface has in general