AGRICULTURE OF LEW CHEW. 17 



The tara is cultivated in the very low, wet, rice lands near Napha and Shui, but is seldom seen 

 in any other part. It seems to he of a dwarf variety, as the leaves are small and imperfectly 

 formed, and the roots are much smaller than in China. 



Of the cereals, wheat is the most common at this season, and grows tolerably well in all the 

 central and limestone pastures of the island. Very little was found in the northeastern parts. 

 It is common, and the great bread crop between Veccoo and Shui, the capital ; though small 

 patches were growing here and there, on the flat sandy lands near the beach, on the western 

 coast, as high as Nago. This was more backward; and on the elevated ridges, from the middle 

 to the northern end, on the western side, the young crops had a yellow appearance, and had 

 been attacked, no doubt, by the Hessian fly. In the central portions of the island, and midway 

 between the eastern and western coast, on the red clay and mulatto land, with a rich limestone, 

 marly sub-soil, the crops were the best, as well as more forward. Here it could be found in all 

 stages. Some we procured quite ripe and ready for harvesting on the 5th of February. While 

 most of the crop was in full head and ripening, but an occasional plot was just planted. Two 

 distinct varieties of wheat are cultivated, though these are often mixed in the same little patch 

 — the smooth-headed and the bearded; the smooth much the most common. This is a small 

 red wheat ; the grain quite small, and short and flinty; and from the rich sweetness of the flour, 

 no doubt yielding a large proportion of nutritious matter. 



The usual mode of cultivation is to prepare their land carefully by sub-soiling with the hoe, 

 and mixing compost, and then planting from 6 to 15 grains in chops or dibbles, in squares from 

 10 to 12 inches apart. But they do sometimes sow broadcast, and this is often in more pro- 

 ductive lands, where the yield must be greater ; for they understand the greater yield pro- 

 duced when the plant has an opportunity to send forth shoots, as it has when broadcast, 

 though their ordinary land is better suited to the row culture, and the facing of single plants in 

 bunches by culture. In some few places they had drilled it, but this was by no means so 

 common as the checkered method. Not more than 12 bushels per acre could be safely estimated 

 as the greatest yield, while the average would be less than 8 bushels ; for, in addition to the 

 reduced number of plants to the acre, from their peculiar mode of culture, the heads of both 

 varieties, but especially of the smooth-headed, were very short. 



Wheat in Lew Chew is, doubtless, subject to many of the diseases of that crop in more tem- 

 perate regions. A few spots had the rust. They have no mills but hand-mills, and these were 

 quite small, and probably imported from China. Saw no threshing-floors for any grain, but 

 understood that they threshed wheat with a flail, as they do rice, on threshing-floors covered 

 with matting or cloth. Barley is cultivated to a limited extent, and, strange to say, they 

 usually select their poorest land high up the hill-sides, with a northern exposure; yet, in spite 

 of this disadvantage, the grain was doing tolerably well. They understand cleaning it well, 

 as some very fine specimens of it, neatly cleaned, were found in the Napha market. 



Saw in market two varieties of millet, which is said to be a staple crop of the island. The 

 grains of the most abundant variety were very large and fine-looking — twice the size of the 

 ordinary millet. Large stacks of the dried stalks were common by road-sides," and on the tops 

 of hills in pine forests, near the villages — placed there for fuel. These stalks were from 6 to 10 

 feet high, and quite large — near the ground three-fourths of an inch in thickness. 



But the most important crop in Lew Chew is the rice crop. This the inhabitants cultivate 



with the utmost care and attention; and their fields, when ripe, are said to be beautiful beyond 



description. The middle and eastern portion of the island has more and better rice lands than 



any other; though, whenever a moist piece of bottom-land can be found, and where water can 



3s 



