LABOUR AND LABOURERS. 43 



practising rapid reduction of rupees to the smallest coin of the 

 Empire, while striving to draw some consolation from the 

 fact that the estate would have nothing to do with cowery 

 shells, 5,120 of which go to the rupee. The thought of giving 

 or receiving such small change of that sort would be dis- 

 traction four pice, or cash, to the anna being quite as much 

 as I could stand with equanimity. 



"The day, like its predecessors, was miserably cold and 

 dull, and, fearful of being overtaken by darkness before getting 

 through the paying, the estate bell was rung an hour earlier 

 than usual to recall the coolies to the mustering ground. 

 They came trooping in from all parts in strong force, and 

 apparently with considerable interest, to see what was going 

 to take place. When they were all mustered the crowd was 

 thicker and denser than I had ever seen it before, everybody 

 having turned out, even to the lame and sick who were too ill 

 to go to work. 



" When I entered the great circle of nearly two hundred 

 men, women, and children, looking as solemn as might be, 

 with the fateful day-book in one hand and a huge bag of 

 copper and silver coins in the other, having the half-caste 

 clerk at my elbow to interpret, I was conscious that all eyes 

 were upon me, and my smallest motion was being watched in 

 deep silence by the assembled coolies. Determined to get 

 into practice as soon as possible, instead of letting the half- 

 caste call over the names, I determined to do it myself, and, 

 shooting out the bag of money into a glittering heap on the 

 rough wooden table in front of me, plunged at once into the 

 long columns of outlandish names, which filled ten or twelve 

 folio pages of the day-book. Opposite to each name, in our 

 system of book-keeping, there were six rows of columns, one 

 for each day of the week, and in each of these columns there 

 was a whole mark, a half, or a blank, according as the coolie 

 had worked a whole day, a half-day, or none at all. Beyond 

 these columns was one to record the total number of days 

 worked out of the last six, and then another division to record 

 the pay given out. At the end of the month the columns of 

 each page were added up, both across and up and down, and, 



