er class styled _ryots_ (the "husbandmen,"
"peasants"), who are the real tillers of the soil. A well-to-do zemindar
will rent two thousand acres of land, for which he pays about four
_annas_ (twelve cents) an acre. The hardships of the ryots are
great--they are treated like slaves, and can barely make a
subsistence--but among the zemindars are numbered some of the wealthiest
men in the country: one, for instance, owns fifty square miles of
fertile land, all wrung from the labor of the poor peasants. Formerly
these zemindars were merely the superintendents of the land, but
latterly they have been declared its hereditary proprietors, and the
before fluctuating dues of government have under a permanent settlement
been unalterably fixed in perpetuity.

As we rolled along, on both sides of the railroad as far as the eye
could see were immense fields of wheat and barley, paddy, tobacco,
mustard, the castor-oil plant, millet, maize, the poppy, indigo and
sugar-cane. Wheat and barley are not sown broadcast as with us, but in
drills a few inches apart: both grains are consumed in the
country--little or none is exported. The paddy resembles rye or wheat
when growing, the rice-kernels being contained in husks at the top of
the spires. The plant requires a wet loamy soil (such as is best offered
in Cambodia and Siam, the former being styled "the Asiatic storehouse of
rice"), and there is but one crop in the year. The mustard-plants which
we saw were about two feet in height, and bore small yellow flowers as
crests. The oil and the table article of commerce are made by grinding
the seeds in mills constructed for the purpose. The castor-oil plant is
a green and succulent shoot about six feet in height, with white flowers
hanging in bunches like hops. Maize is never fed to cattle as in
America, but is all consumed by the poorer classes of natives. But most
interesting were the poppy-plants. These are raised in oblong patches of
ground surrounded by low mud walls for retaining the water which is
essential to their growth. The plants are quite small, with green leaves
at the base, from which rise tall stalks with bulb-like tops, the pod of
the flower. At the proper season, when ripe, incisions are made in these
bulbs--simple scratches--by drawing two needles across them toward
evening, and the juice, which exudes during the night, is scraped off in
the morning and collected in shells. This operation is performed upon
all sides of the bu