822 Memoir of Sylhet, Kachar, S^ adjacent Districts. [No. 104. 



adventurers to the woods for timber, bamboos, grass, &c., or they clear 

 land on the hills for cotton, build boats, and convey grain to the 

 markets in the south, &c. ; while the Ryots act as boatmen, coolies, and 

 the like, in all which employments little or no cash outlay is required ; 

 but they subsist on grain raised in their own fields, while their wives 

 and children maintain themselves by making cloths, &c., for home 

 consumption, or sale, carrying the produce of their gardens and orchards 

 to market, and tending cattle. 



There is nothing very remarkable in all this perhaps, except that it 

 exhibits a society among which the first steps in economical improve- 

 ment have hardly been taken, the advantages of the division of labour 

 not having yet been appreciated, or rather the introduction of that 

 principle having been prevented, by the want of accumulated capital, to 

 meet the expense and delay that must precede the more ample returns 

 which it ensures. I will not enter into any estimate of the expenses 

 attending the cultivation of land, and its return, as a farming specula- 

 tion, although I have by me details on the point; but conclude this 

 subject with observing, that at the existing rates of rent and labonr 

 agriculture would return the former (independent of any improvements 

 he might effect) about thirty per cent., on his capital. The common 

 opinion, confirmed by the current price of estates, is, that money in- 

 vested in land yields the proprietor from 12 to 15 per cent. 



Hill Agriculture. — Among the hill tribes, cultivation is very imper- 

 fectly practised, and many therefore depend wholly on their intercourse 

 with the plains ; nor can it be said that any of them are at all times 

 wholly secured from want by their own resources. The nature of the 

 country in the south part of the Kasia mountains precludes agriculture, 

 but in the central and northern parts rice is raised in considerable 

 quantity, particularly in the little glens, and on the sides of the vallies, 

 irrigation being practised, and the water brought to the field through 

 narrow canals, and conveyed over hollows, or up heights, for short 

 distances by hollow trunks of trees or bamboos, experience having 

 taught the cultivator that water can be made to rise in tubes to the 

 level of its source. The labouring season is in the spring, and the 

 crop is cut in August and September. 



In the wooded parts of the mountains, by whomsoever occupied, 

 whether Kacharies, Nagas, or Kukies, the cultivation is of a mixed 



