st any other part of the island; the Batta country perhaps
alone excepted. Here may be seen pieces of land in size from five to
fifteen acres, regularly ploughed and harrowed. The difference is thus
accounted for. It is the most populous district in that southern part,
with the smallest extent of sea-coast. The pepper plantations and ladangs
together having in a great measure exhausted the old woods in the
accessible parts of the country, and the inhabitants being therein
deprived of a source of fertility which nature formerly supplied, they
must either starve, remove to another district, or improve by cultivation
the spot where they reside. The first is contrary to the inherent
principle that teaches man to preserve life by every possible means:
their attachment to their native soil, or rather their veneration for the
sepulchres of their ancestors, is so strong that to remove would cost
them a struggle almost equal to the pangs of death: necessity therefore,
the parent of art and industry, compels them to cultivate the earth.

RATE OF PRODUCE.

The produce of the grounds thus tilled is reckoned at thirty for one;
from those in the ordinary mode about a hundred fold on the average, the
ladangs yielding about eighty, and the sawahs a hundred and twenty. Under
favourable circumstances I am assured the rate of produce is sometimes so
high as a hundred and forty fold. The quantity sown by a family is
usually from five to ten bamboo measures or gallons. These returns are
very extraordinary compared with those of our wheat-fields in Europe,
which I believe seldom exceed fifteen, and are often under ten. To what
is this disproportion owing? to the difference of grain, as rice may be
in its nature extremely prolific? to the more genial influence of a
warmer climate? or to the earth's losing by degrees her fecundity from an
excessive cultivation? Rather than to any of these causes I am inclined
to attribute it to the different process followed in sowing. In England
the saving of labour and promoting of expedition are the chief objects,
and in order to effect these the grain is almost universally scattered in
the furrows; excepting where the drill has been introduced. The
Sumatrans, who do not calculate the value of their own labour or that of
their domestics on such occasions, make holes in the ground, as has been
described, and drop into each a few grains*; or, by a process still more
tedious, raise the seed in beds and then pl