354 Report on the Island of Chedooba, [No. 113. 



it to be fallow for a season, in practice, year by year the same land yields its 

 single crop in due season; the amount which is exacted from it, and to 

 which it is fully equal. Lands in fallow are observable, sometimes exten- 

 tively ; but on enquiry the account always given of them was either that 

 they had fallen out of cultivation from decrease of population, consequent 

 on long continued political disturbance, or that they were lands cultivated 

 for a season by settlers, who had after a time returned to the commu- 

 nities whence they had issued. 



From natural causes connected with the character of the soil, and from 

 a practice in use among the people, all the cultivated lands are strictly 

 speaking subjected to an annual process if not of manuring, yet of an 

 addition into the body of the soil of that which must greatly tend to the 

 same effect. The heat of the dry season covers the face of the land with 

 a tissue of deep cracks, in these the decay of leaves, grass, &c. during that 

 season, makes a considerable deposit of vegetable matter. 



It is also customary with the natives to burn their paddy stubble, and 

 grass lands immediately previous to the monsoon, whose first rains be- 

 fore closing the fissures, wash into them the ashes thus formed — with 

 regard to the grass lands they are burnt expressly with the view of im- 

 proving the future crop, and the same benefit is doubtless effected to the 

 rice land by the practice. 



Its effect is particularly beneficial to the upraised plains, by assisting 

 greatly the decomposition and dispersion of the calcareous matter upon 

 their surface, and which must contribute largely to bring them into a 

 cultivable state. To illustrate the gradual effect produced by the above 

 means on these particular lands ; it was stated to me by an eye witness 

 that the upraised plain of the N. W. part of the Island was 15 years in 

 acquiring its first clothing of grass, not only is it now covered deeply by 

 that production, but many parts have for years yielded crops of rice, and 

 all might do so. Jungle also is fast forming over it. Some parts of the 

 low lands, both new and old, presented a sort of peat soil, still moist in the 

 middle of the dry season, and affording luxuriant and green pasture. 

 These grassy patches were most observable in the Krae-rone circle, 

 which divides, on the north face of the Island, the more clayey soils of 

 the west, from the more sandy ones of the east. 



Rice is the staple produce of Chedooba. It is grown on all the level 

 lands which form a land of more or less width around the Island, to 

 which at present all cultivation with slight exception is limited. The 

 yearly amount of this necessary produce varies, more through the fitfulness 

 of temper of the people, than from any irregularity of the seasons. The 



