rs. And here I shall first speak of their Rice,
the Choice and Flower of all their Corn, and then concerning the
other inferior kinds among them.

[Rice.] Of Rice they have several sorts, and called by several names
according to the different times of their ripening: However in tast
little disagreeing from one another. Some will require seven Months
before it come to maturity, called Mauvi; some six, Hauteal; others
will ripen in five, Honorowal; others in four, Henit; and others in
three, Aulfancol: The price of all these is one and the same. That
which is soonest ripe, is most savoury to the tast; but yieldeth
the least increase. It may be asked then, why any other sort of Rice
is sown, but that which is longest a Ripening, seeing it brings in
most Profit? In answer to this, you must know, [Grows in Water. Their
Ingenuity in watering their Corn Lands.] That all these sorts of Rice
do absolutely require Water to grow in, all the while they stand; so
that the Inhabitants take great pains in procuring and saving water
for their Grounds, and in making Conveyances of Water from their Rivers
and Ponds into their Lands, which they are very ingenious in; also in
levelling their Corn Lands, which must be as smooth as a Bowling-Green,
that the Water may cover all over. Neither are their steep and Hilly
Lands uncapable of being thus overflown with Water. For the doing of
which they use this Art. They level these Hills into narrow Allies,
some three; some eight foot wide one beneath another, according to the
steepness of the Hills, working and digging them in that fashion that
they lye smooth and flat, like so many Stairs up the Hills one above
another. The Waters at the top of the Hills falling down wards are
let into these Allies, and so successively by running out of one into
another, water all; first the higher Lands, and then the lower. The
highest Allies having such a quantity of Water as may suffice to
cover them, the rest runs over unto the next, and that having its
proportion, unto the next, and so by degrees it falls into all these
hanging parcels of Ground. These Waters last sometimes a longer, and
sometimes a shorter Season. [Why they do not alwayes sow the best kind
of Rice.] Now the Rice they sow is according as they foresee their
stock of Water will last. It will sometimes last them two or three,
or four or five Months, more or less; the Rice therefore they chuse
to cast into the Ground, is of that sort that may an