day" has been named by the priest of the
nearest temple, the grain is scattered broad-cast;
after which the simple harrowing takes
place. This is effected by a large flat board, or
the bough of a large tree, to which, in order to
impart the necessary weight and effect, a heavy
stone is secured; or perhaps one or two of the
ryot's children may be seated upon it.

To any one not accustomed to this style of
agriculture, the whole process appears absurd in
the extreme. But in the course of a very few
days the sense of the ridiculous will be lost in
astonishment, at the rapid and very regular
vegetation which appears after the early falls
of rain. Another shower and a day of sunshine,
and behold that wide expanse of sterile,
forbidding country is stretched before the spectator
a brilliant sheet of lovely green.

From the first growth of the young rice
ears, the progress to maturity is always in
proportion to the abundance of the water
supply, natural or artificial. From three
to seven months, but more frequently four
months, is all that is required to grow and
ripen this crop; the return from which is from
twenty to eighty fold. In spite of the simplicity
of the process, and the rapid growth and large
returns, the rice cultivator in most parts of
British India is rarely free from debt. Once in
the hands of the Mahagrin, or money-lender, he
can seldom hope to escape. The exactions, too,
of the Zemindars, or landowners, are of
themselves quite suflicient to impoverish a class of
men whose ignorance and simplicity render them
an easy prey.

When we reflect that, out of the twenty-two
or three millions of annual revenue raised
in British India, from fifteen to sixteen
millions are the produce of the land culture, we
can at once see how important is this great staple
of industry.

Amidst populous districts, or on the banks of
rivers, or near seaports, the ryot finds a ready
sale for his produce at prices which in most
ordinary times should leave him a liberal profit
over all outlay; but, in more remote parts, where
roads and intercommunication are scanty, a
super-abundant yield is not unfrequeutly a positive loss.
Without the means of finding other markets for
his crop, he is compelled to sacrifice it at the
ruinously low rate a year of plenty entails; for
the Mahagrin must be paid forthwith, and there
is no alternative but to dispose of his grain at
the rate of the day. In like manner these remote
places suffer in proportion during seasons of
great scarcity, at which times—and these
frequently occur—it is impossible to procure food
in sufficient quantities: so that whole provinces
are laid waste by famine as completely as though
a pestilence had swept over the land.

In Europe there are but a few varieties of
rice procurable. In the producing countries
there are scores: indeed, every island in the
Eastern seas, every province and territory, enjoys
some peculiar varieties not elsewhere met with.
These may in a general way be classed under
two great divisions: the field, or wet rice—the
cultivation of which I have already endeavoured
to describe—and the hill, or dry rice, grown
on the slopes or summits of hills, and without
careful irrigation.

The yield of this latter is very small, and is
only produced on soil which would scarcely grow
any other grain, and by villagers of the most
limited means. But hill-sides are frequently
made to produce the heaviest crops of wet rice
in many parts of the East when the means of
irrigation are at hand, and when the soil to be
worked is of suitable character. In such cases
the whole side of the hill to be cultivated is cut
into terraces, into the topmost of which water is
conducted; whence it flows to the terrace-field
below, and so on until it reaches the base.

The ground in these instances is dug up and
not ploughed, for want of sufficient space; but
the produce is fully as great as in any ploughed
land. These terraces, when in full verdure,
present a most strikingly picturesque appearance,
rising often to the topmost summit of rather
lofty hills. Indeed, in almost any position, a
succession of fields of half-grown rice, forms
one of the loveliest scenes that can be imagined.
The soft brightness of its tropic green is so
enchanting, and offers such a strong contrast to
the clumps of yellow bamboos about it, and the
brilliant blue above, that it excels anything of
the kind that can be met with in colder regions.

For hundreds of miles along the banks of the
principal rivers in India the eye rests upon
continuous tracts of rice; and large is the
up-country trade in this article, and vast the
fleet of up-country boats required to carry it to
the cities arid ports of the low country. Some
of these rice lands occasionally encounter strange
adventures during the heavy floods which
periodically swell the Ganges and the Burhampootra
into rolling, resistless seas. Bursting
from their wonted bounds, and cutting for
themselves new channels, these mighty rivers
often detach entire fields, and sweep them away
on their turbulent waters, carrying with them
cattle, men, huts, and trees, to deposit them
miles down the rivers at any sharp angles or
narrow bends.

In some part of India, but especially in
Lower Scinde, there is a peculiar description
of rice cultivation, unknown, I believe, to
any other part of the world. It is known
amongst the Scindians as the Bhull-rice culture,
from its being carried on upon what are termed
"bhulls." These lands are neither more nor
less than alluvial deposits washed down by the
freshets of the rivers, and left by them to form
islands of soft, quagmire at the low summer
tides, along either side of the debouchures of
these streams into the ocean. At the mouths
of the Indus there are hundreds of these
bhulls, varying in extent from one to fifty
acres. During ordinary tides, for five or six
months in the year, they will have a surface
three or four feet above the tide level,
composed to that depth of extremely soft mire.
This will be surrounded, by the Zemindars
who lay claim to them, by low mud banks