PAST AND PRESENT. 225 



married people, but is always the sequel of youthful 

 indiscretion. 



The people who inhabit the villages along the coast 

 invariably combine farming and fishing as a livelihood. 

 In these situations a great deal of the field work is 

 done by the women. These fields are generally about 

 ten or twenty yards square. The plains and smaller 

 valleys are all, however flat and level they may be, 

 cut up into little patches of the above size. A raised 

 pathway, eight or ten inches wide, divides one piece 

 of groiind from another. At the head of every valley 

 are almost invariably several huge reservoirs of water ; 

 and all these valleys have a stream of water, either 

 small or large, running down them. The reservoirs are 

 constructed by building a huge bank across from one 

 side of the steep hills to the other. Further down 

 again a similar bank is thrown across. These great 

 tanks are more like small natural lakes than artificially 

 constructed water-holders. 



Many a lovely mandarin duck have I bagged from 

 these places. Boar and deer are also extremely partial 

 to the hill slopes and alder thickets that generally 

 surround these far-off reservoirs. Very frequently the 

 higher ones are buried in the thick wood, miles from 

 cultivation. These are very seldom tapped, an -excep- 



