eir ancestors. There is also a
class of farmers called, from their poverty, "water-drinking farmers,"
who have no land of their own, but hire that of those who have more
than they can keep in their own hands. The rent so paid varies; but
good rice land will bring in as high a rent as from L1 18s. to L2 6s.
per tan (1,800 square feet).

Farm labourers are paid from six or seven riyos a year to as much as
thirty riyos (the riyo being worth about 5s. 4d.); besides this, they
are clothed and fed, not daintily indeed, but amply. The rice which
they cultivate is to them an almost unknown luxury: millet is their
staple food, and on high days and holidays they receive messes of
barley or buckwheat. Where the mulberry-tree is grown, and the
silkworm is "educated," there the labourer receives the highest wage.

The rice crop on good land should yield twelve and a half fold, and on
ordinary land from six to seven fold only. Ordinary arable land is
only half as valuable as rice land, which cannot be purchased for less
than forty riyos per tan of 1,800 square feet. Common hill or wood
land is cheaper, again, than arable land; but orchards and groves of
the Pawlonia are worth from fifty to sixty riyos per tan.

With regard to the punishment of crucifixion, by which Sogoro was put
to death, it is inflicted for the following offences:--parricide
(including the murder or striking of parents, uncles, aunts, elder
brothers, masters, or teachers) coining counterfeit money, and passing
the barriers of the Tycoon's territory without a permit.[59] The
criminal is attached to an upright post with two cross bars, to which
his arms and feet are fastened by ropes. He is then transfixed with
spears by men belonging to the Eta or Pariah class. I once passed the
execution-ground near Yedo, when a body was attached to the cross. The
dead man had murdered his employer, and, having been condemned to
death by crucifixion, had died in prison before the sentence could be
carried out. He was accordingly packed, in a squatting position, in a
huge red earthenware jar, which, having been tightly filled up with.
salt, was hermetically sealed. On the anniversary of the commission of
the crime, the jar was carried down to the execution-ground and
broken, and the body was taken out and tied to the cross, the joints
of the knees and arms having been cut, to allow of the extension of
the stiffened and shrunken limbs; it was then transfixed with spears,
and allow