Taking vegetables, or rice, or other commodities to the bazaar, the
carrier often slings his burden to the two ends of a pole worn over the
shoulder, much as Chinamen do. But they generally make their load into
one bundle which they carry on the head, or which they sling, if not
large and bulky, over their backs, rolled up in one of their cloths.

During the rice-planting season they toil in mud and water from
earliest morn till late into twilight. Bending and stooping all the
day, their lower extremities up to the knee sometimes in water, and the
scorching sun beating on their backs, they certainly show their patient
plodding industry, for it is downright honest hard work.

The young rice is taken from the nursery patch, where it has been sown
thick some time previously. When the rice-field is ready--a sloppy,
muddy, embanked little quagmire--the ryot gets his bundle of young
rice-plants, and shoves in two or three at a time with his finger and
thumb. These afterwards form the tufts of rice. Its growth is very
rapid. Sometimes, in case of flood, the rice actually grows with the
rise of the water, always keeping its tip above the stream. If wholly
submerged for any length of time it dies. There are over a hundred
varieties. Some are only suited for very deep marshy soils; others,
such as the _s[=a]tee_, or sixty-days rice, can be grown on comparatively
high land, and ripen early. If rain be scanty, the _s[=a]tee_ and other
rice crops have to be weeded. It is cut with a jagged-edged sort of
reaping-hook called a _hussooa_. The cut bundles are carried from the
fields by women, girls, and lads. They could not take carts in many
instances into the swamps.

At such times you see every little dyke or embankment with a crowd of
bustling villagers, each with a heavy bundle of grain on his head,
hurrying to and fro like a stream of busy ants. The women, with clothes
tucked up above the knee, plod and plash through the water. They go at
a half run, a kind of fast trot, and hardly a word is spoken--garnering
the rice crops is too important an operation to dawdle and gossip over.
Each hurries off with his burden to the little family threshing-floor,
dumps down his load, gives a weary grunt, straightens his back, gives a
yawn, then off again to the field for another load. It is no use
leaving a bundle on the field; where food is so eagerly looked for by
such a dense population, where there are hungry mouths and empty
stomachs i