174 LOMBOCK. 



cultivation in the world, equalling all that is related of Chinese 

 industry, and, as far as I know, surpassing in the labor tj^at 

 has been bestowed upon it any tract of equal extent in the 

 most civilized countries of Europe. I rode through this 

 strange garden utterly amazed, and hardly able to realize the 

 fact that in this remote and little known island, from which all 

 Europeans except a few traders at the port are jealously ex- 

 cluded, many hundreds of square miles of irregularly undula- 

 ting country have been so skillfully terraced and levelled, and 

 so permeated by artificial channels, that every portion of it can 

 be irrigated and dried at pleasure. According as the slope 

 of the ground is more or less rapid, each terraced plot con- 

 sists in some places of many acres, in others of a few square 

 yards. We saw them in every state of cultivation ; some in 

 stubble, some being plowed, some with rice-crops in various 

 stages of growth. Here were luxuriant patches of tobacco ; 

 there, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, yams, beans, or Indian-corn 

 varied the scene. In some places the ditches were dry, in 

 others little streams crossed our road, and were distributed 

 over lands about to be sown or planted. The banks which 

 bordered every terrace rose regularly in horizontal lines above 

 each other ; sometimes rounding an abrupt knoll, and looking 

 like a fortification, or sweeping round some deep hollow, and 

 forming on a gigantic scale the seats of an amphitheatre. 

 Every brook and rivulet had been diyerted from its bed, and 

 .instead of flowing along the lowest ground, were to be found 

 crossing our road half-way up an ascent, yet bordered by an- 

 cient trees and moss-grown stones so as to have all the ap- 

 pearance of a natural channel, and bearing testimony to the 

 remote period at which the work had been done. As we ad- 

 vanced farther into the country, the scene was diversified by 

 abrupt rocky hills, by steep ravines, and by clumps of bamboos 

 and palm-trees near houses or villages ; while in the distance 

 the fine range of mountains, of which Lombock peak, eight 

 thousand feet high, is the culminating point, formed a fit back- 

 ground to a view scarcely to be surpassed either in human 

 interest or picturesque beauty. 



Along the first part of our road we passed hundreds of 

 women carrying rice, fruit, and vegetables to market ; and 

 further on an almost uninterrupted line of horses, laden with 



