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is famous for its rice cultivation. Our first view of this region was 

 from a mountain pass at an altitude of 4,900 feet. Here the 

 whole expanse of plateau was spread out before us, glittering with 

 the reflection of sunlight from thousands of sawahs. For miles 

 ahead the countr\^ was terraced, even on the steepest hillsides, 

 into large fields of an acre or little fields as small as a room, but 

 mostly the latter, because the country is ver}* hilly. The terraces 

 here are made, to a considerable extent, of rocks, and around the 

 huge boulders bananas are frequently planted. 



There are no shades of green in temperate zones to rival those 

 of the tropics, and there the most brilliant greens of all are in the 

 sawahs. Before they are planted, they are red with the red 

 tropical soil, when the plants first appear, they are converted into 

 a series of mirrors, as the sky- is reflected back from the water, 

 with just a faint tinge of yellowish-green from the young plants. 

 Then it becomes a bright yellow-green, a bright emerald green, 

 and later an intense deep green. Then the green turns to white 

 as the rice heads out, then to yellow as it ripens, and finally to a 

 pale yellow-brown as the old straw is left after harvest. One 

 can look over a couple of miles of terraced valley and see the 

 whole extent mottled with every one of these shades at once. Xo 

 two ^'alleys are ever terraced in the same way, and no two 

 sawahs look exacth^ alike, so that they never lose their attractive- 

 ness to the traveller. 



As the rice grows, so do the plants on the terraces, until at the 

 time of brightest green one can hardly* distinguish where the 

 terraces are. Here too, as in all mountainous countries, it is 

 impossible to decide on what is true level, so that many of the 

 level sawahs seem to slope uphill. Little irrigation canals go 

 rushing down the hills over the sawahs, other little canals flow 

 smoothly and quietly around the hills between them, hollowed 

 logs of coconut carry one stream across another, little streams 

 drop over a low spot in the terrace wall from one sawah to the 

 next, and all the water is used over again, in a series of rice fields, 

 clear to the ocean. Paths run along the terraces from one village 

 to another, brown bitterns fly over the sawahs, white herons wade 

 in the shallow water, windmills whirl and squeak, scare-crows 



