lties which are
scarcely felt by a large population.

By the latter the advantage is enjoyed of the division of labor. The
dams are built of permanent material; every work is rapidly completed;
the night-fires blaze in the lofty watch-house, while the shouts of the
watchers scare the wild beasts from the crops. Hundreds of children are
daily screaming from their high perches to scare away the birds.
Rattles worked by long lines extend in every direction, unceasingly
pulled by the people in the watch-houses; wind-clackers (similar to our
cherry-clackers) are whirling in all places; and by the division of the
toil among a multitude the individual work proceeds without fatigue.

Every native is perfectly aware of this advantage in rice cultivation;
and were the supply of water ensured to them by the repair of a
principal tank, they would gather around its margin. The thorny jungles
would soon disappear from the surface of the ground, and a
densely-populated and prosperous district would again exist where all
has been a wilderness for a thousand years.

The system of rice cultivation is exceedingly laborious. The first
consideration being a supply of water, the second is a perfect level,
or series of levels, to be irrigated. Thus a hill-side must be
terraced out into a succession of platforms or steps; and a plain,
however apparently flat, must, by the requisite embankments, be reduced
to the most perfect surface.

This being completed, the water is laid on for a certain time, until
the soil has become excessively soft and muddy. It is then run off,
and the land is ploughed by a simple implement, which, being drawn by
two buffaloes, stirs up the soil to a depth of eighteen inches. This
finished, the water is again laid on until the mud becomes so soft that
a man will sink knee-deep. In this state it is then trodden over by
buffaloes, driven backward and forward in large gangs, until the mud is
so thoroughly mixed that upon the withdrawal of the water it sinks to a
perfect level.

Upon this surface the paddy, having been previously soaked in water, is
now sown; and, in the course of a fortnight, it attains a height of
about four inches. The water is now again laid on, and continued at
intervals until within a fortnight of the grain becoming ripe. It is
then run off; the ground hardens, the ripe crop is harvested by the
sickle, and the grain is trodden out by buffaloes. The rice is then
separated from the paddy or