r sufficient to cultivate the
rice-lands; their numbers will not even suffice for driving their
buffaloes. The jungle closes round the village; cholera finishes the
scene by sweeping off the remnant; and groves of cocoa-nut trees,
towering over the thorny jungle, become monuments sacred to the memory
of an exterminated village.

The number of villages which have thus died out is almost incredible.
In a day's ride of twenty miles, I have passed the remains of as many
as three or four, how many more may have vanished in the depths of the
jungle!

Wherever the cocoa-nut trees are still existing, the ruin of the
village must have been comparatively recent, as the wild elephants
generally overturn them in a few years after the disappearance of the
inhabitants, browsing upon the succulent tops, and destroying every
trace of a former habitation.

There is no doubt that when sickness is annually reducing the
population of a district, the inhabitants, and accordingly the produce
of the land, must shortly come to an end. In all times of pestilence
the first impulse among the natives is to fly from the neighborhood,
but at present there is no place of refuge. It is, therefore, a matter
of certainty that the repair of one of the principal tanks would draw
together in thousands the survivors of many half-perished villages, who
would otherwise fall victims to succeeding years of sickness.

The successful cultivation of rice at all times requires an extensive
population, and large grazing-grounds for the support of the buffaloes
necessary for the tillage of the land.

The labor of constructing dams and forming watercourses is performed by
a general gathering, similar to the American principle of a "bee;" and,
as "many hands make light work," the cultivation proceeds with great
rapidity. Thus a large population can bring into tillage a greater
individual proportion of ground than a smaller number of laborers, and
the rice is accordingly produced at a cheaper rate.

Few people understand the difficulties with which a small village has
to contend in the cultivation of rice. The continual repairs of
temporary dams, which are nightly trodden down and destroyed by
elephants; the filling up of the water-courses from the same cause; the
nocturnal attacks upon the crops by elephants and hogs; the devastating
attacks of birds as the grain becomes ripe; a scarcity of water at the
exact moment it is required; and other numerous difficu