re separated from the dust
and partly from the outward membranous coat by means of a kind of
winnow, and are then laid up in warehouses. The white pepper is the
same production as the black. It undergoes a process to change its
colour, being laid in lime, which takes off the outer black coat and
leaves it white.

Rice is also produced in large quantities. It grows chiefly in low
fenny ground. After it has been sown, and has shot up about half a foot
from the ground, it is transplanted by little bundles of one or more
plants in rows; then, by damming up the many rivulets which abound in
this country, the rice is inundated in the rainy season, and kept under
water till the stalks have attained sufficient strength, when the land
is drained by opening the dams, and it is soon dried by the great heat
of the sun. At the time of the rice harvest the fields have much the
same appearance as our wheat and barley fields, and indeed are uniformly
covered with a still more brilliantly golden hue. The sickle is not
used in reaping the rice, but instead of it a small knife, with which
the stalk is cut about a foot under the ear; this is done one by one,
and the ears are then bound in sheaves, the tenth of which is the pay of
the mower. The _paddee_, which is the name given to the rice while in
the husk, does not grow, like wheat and barley, in compact ears, but,
like oats, in loose spikes. It is not threshed to separate it from the
husks, but pounded in large wooden blocks hollowed out, and the more it
is pounded the whiter it becomes when boiled. Rice, with fish or a
little meat chopped up, constitute the chief food of the inhabitants.
Sugar, coffee, and indigo are also largely produced.

For the purposes of agriculture buffaloes are used instead of horses.
They are very large animals, bigger and heavier than our largest oxen,
furnished with great ears, and horns which project straight forward and
bend inwards. A hole is bored through the cartilage of the nose, and
these huge animals are guided by a cord which is passed through it.
They have little eyes, and their colour is generally ashy grey. They
are so accustomed to be led three times a day into the water to cool
themselves, that they cannot without doing so be brought to work. The
people themselves, by-the-bye, are great bathers, both men and women,
the children, who seldom wear clothes till they are seven or eight,
being constantly in the water. That said custom m