Manchester Memoirs, Vol. Ix. (1916), No. 6. 15 



speaking of Lombok says, " Soon after passing Mataram 

 the country began gradually to rise in gentle undulations, 

 swelling occasionally into low hills towards the two 

 mountainous tracts in the northern and southern parts of 

 the island. It was now that I first obtained an adequate 

 idea of one of the most wonderful systems of cultivation 

 in the world, equalling all that is related of Chinese 

 industry, and as far as I know surpassing in the labour 

 that has been bestowed upon it any tract of equal extent 

 in the most civilised countries of Europe. I rode through 

 this strange garden utterly amazed, and hardly able to 

 realise the fact, that in this remote and little known 

 island, from which all Europeans, except a few traders at 

 the port, are jealously excluded, many hundreds of square 

 miles of irregularly undulating country have been so 

 skilfully terraced and levelled, and so permeated by 

 artificial channels, that every portion of it can be irrigated 

 and dried at pleasure. Ascending as the slope of the 

 ground is more or less rapid, each terraced plot consists 

 in some places of many acres, in others of a few square 

 yards .... In some places the ditches were dry, 

 in others little streams crossed our road and were dis- 

 tributed over lands about to be sown or planted. The 

 banks which bordered every terrace rose regularly in 

 horizontal lines above each other ; sometimes rounding 

 an abrupt knoll and looking like a fortification, or 

 sweeping round some deep hollow and forming on a 

 gigantic scale the seats of an amphitheatre. Every brook 

 and rivulet had been diverted from its bed, and instead 

 of flowing along the lowest ground were to be found 

 crossing our road half-way up an ascent, yet bordered by 

 ancient trees and moss-grown stones so as to have all the 

 appearance of a natural channel, and bearing testimony 

 to the remote period at which the work had been done." « 



45 A. R. Wallace, " The Malay Archipelago," 3rd Edit., 1890, p. 126. 



