8 BERTHA'S VISIT TO HER 



deliverance are offered ; and let us remember that, 

 like the Israelites, we are but strangers and pil- 

 grims here, hastening on to a land of promise." 



6th. Mary asked Colonel Travers to-day 

 why rice is called paddy in the East Indies. 

 He told us that the wet lands capable of being 

 cultivated for rice, are called, in the province of 

 Malabar, padda land ; and thence has the name 

 paddy been given to the grain before the husk is 

 beaten off. It is cultivated in all the low 

 grounds which are periodically overflowed ; or 

 where the water can be regularly let in. Some- 

 times it is sown dry, on fields properly ploughed 

 and moistened beforehand, and when the leaf 

 is a certain height, the water is gently let into 

 the furrows 5 but in many places it is sown very 

 thickly, and afterwards transplanted. The ge- 

 neral mode of preparing the seed is to steep it in 

 water, and then to mix it up with earth in a shed, 

 where it heats a little, and soon sprouts : when 

 the shoot is nearly two inches long, it is carried 

 in baskets to the field, and planted in rows. 



The operation of cleaning rice is assisted by 

 boiling for a short time ; after which it is beaten 

 in a mortar with a stick five or six feet long, the 

 bottom of which is shod with iron. But the 

 rice used by the higher class of Brahmins is not 

 boiled, lest it should be in any way defiled : it 

 is every morning cleaned dry by one of the 



