140 



Saigon : they were very populous before their prosperity invited 

 attack from the north, and before the restless centuries came when 

 Shan, Burman and Siamese wasted each other's lands and carried off 

 wholesale each other's subjects, not for domestic slavery but to 

 maintain their own wasted fields. The Kedah rice fields were the 

 southern fringe of the cultivation of these kingdoms. On the other 

 hand, the Malacca rice lands came to be what they are out of an over- 

 flow from Palembang or Menangkabau in Sumatra, when " the 

 egrets on flapping wings " ci'ossed the Straits to set up colonies on a 

 coast which undulated like their own home. Both extensions invited 

 European establishments in turn, Malacca first when the Portuguese 

 found trade possible and profitable, and the Kedah area next, when 

 Francis Light after living in it, built up the settlement of Penang 

 upon its edge, well chosen and not foodless like the decaying settle- 

 ment of Bencoolen. 



There was something in the success of Malacca and Penang 

 which might have read a lesson thirty years ago in the opening up 

 of the Federated Malay States, to those who tried very earnestly to 

 settle small colonies of rice growers in various places. So many of 

 these colonies perished from their smallness. It had been easier 

 then to have built on to the edge of that which existed : and it 

 appears easier now to work at the extension of the Krian rice 

 ai-ea than to dissipate efforts in diverse directions. I look upon 

 Krian as the area for results in rice. But turning to Malacca, it 

 must be noticed how limited, there, is the field for expansion, 

 and that the problem is the maintenance of the sawahs and the 

 getting of the landholders to rise to overriding those disadvantages 

 to which they have been put by the washing of silt from the 

 cleared uplands on to the paddy land. 



Although rice grows in water, soil aeration is most important 

 to it. Stagnant water is very inimical. There needs to be a 

 movement over the surface ; and there must be a movement through 

 the soil. The best rice land is particularly open in texture. It is 

 the practice to grow in the Peninsula one rice crop only in the year 

 and to let the weeds riot on the land during the rest of the twelve 

 months. When sowing time is coming round these weeds are 

 ploughed in and make valuable green manure. Such a practice is 

 by no means confined to the Peninsula but is very wide spread 

 where rice is grown : its working has been studied particularly in 

 Southern India, and it has been found what an important additional 

 part the ploughed-in weeds play in the aeration of the soil. Down 

 that avenue which points to greater profit from paddy by taking 

 a crop from off the land in the fallow we may only look, bearing in 

 mind the need of the fields of this green manuring which the second 

 orop would disturb. 



There are various places in the East where a second rice crop 

 is grown in the fallow time, a quicker growing and less profitable 



