e on
the globe. It requires heat and moisture for its growth, and it is
raised in considerable quantities on the low lands of Georgia and South
Carolina and elsewhere in our country. The plant grows from one to six
feet high. I don't know much about the culture of this grain in the
East; but in South Carolina they first dig trenches, in the bottom of
which the rice is sown in rows eighteen inches apart. The plantation is
prepared so that water can be let in and drawn off as desired. As soon
as the seed is sown, the water is let in till the ground is covered to
the depth of several inches. As soon as the rice comes up, the water is
drawn off, and the plant grows in the open air rapidly under the hot
sun. The field is again flooded for a couple of weeks, to kill the
weeds, and again when the grain is ripening. The rice is in a hull, like
wheat and other grains; and you have found parts of this covering in the
rice when you were cooking it. It is threshed out by hand or machinery
after it is dried, and then it is ready for market. There is a
rice-field on your right; and you can see the channels which have been
dug to convey the water to the plants, or to draw it off," said the
surgeon in conclusion.

"I see them, Dr. Hawkes; and I am very much obliged to you for taking so
much pains to instruct an ignorant body like me," replied Mrs. Blossom.

"It is quite impossible for any of us to know everything, and I often
find myself entirely ignorant in regard to some things; and I have lived
long enough to forget many things that I learned when I was younger,"
added the doctor with a softening smile.

The villages increased in number and in size as the ship approached the
city; though they were about the same thing, except that in the larger
ones the temple was a handsomer structure.

"How far is it from the sea to Saigon?" asked Bangs, speaking to the
pilot for the first time; but the Frenchman could not understand him,
and the quartermaster called Louis in, who repeated the question in
French.

"Sixty miles if you go one way; thirty-five by another," Louis
translated the reply.

"That may account for the difference in the distance given in the
books," said the captain, who was in the pilot-house. "But the
information we obtain from what are considered the authorities is so
various on the same subject that I don't know where the fault is."

"This is the largest village we have seen," said Louis to the pilot in
French.