1859.] Notes on Kafiristan. 337 



oxen cannot possibly be brought for that purpose ; but in no 

 instances are women yoked to the plough along with cattle. What 

 is there more natural than that a poor uncivilized man, possessing 

 but the bare necessaries of life, and unable either to pay for, or to 

 obtain help from others, should be assisted by his wife and children 

 in tilling the scanty portion of land, on which they all depend for 

 their daily subsistence ? Do not women, even in civilized and 

 polished Europe, up to the present moment, work in the fields, and 

 perform many other laborious duties, adapted for men alone ? and 

 but too often to support an indolent and drunken husband and 

 numerous family ? Hear what that honest writer William Howitt, 

 in his " Eural Lipe in England" says on this very subject. " A 

 person from the South or Midland counties of England, journeying 

 northward, is struck when he enters Durham or Northumberland 

 with the sight of bands of women working in the fields under the 

 surveillance of one man. One or two such bands of from half a 

 dozen to a dozen women, generally young, might be passed over ; 

 but when they recur again and again, and you observe them 

 wherever yougo, they become a marked feature of the agricultural 

 system of the country ; and you naturally enquire how it is that such 

 regular bands of female labourers prevail there. The answer in the 

 provincial tongue is — they are ' Boneditchers,' i. e. Bondagers* 

 Bondagers ! that is an odd sound, you think, in England. What 

 have we bondage, a rural serfdom, still existing in free and fair 

 England ? Even so. The thing is astounding enough, but it is a 

 fact. As I cast my eyes for the first time on these female bands in 

 the fields, working under their drivers, I was, before making anv 

 enquiry respecting them, irresistibly reminded of the slave-gangs of 

 the West Indies : turnip-hoeing, somehow, associated itself strangely 

 in my head with sugar-cane dressing ; buc when I heard these 

 women called Bondagers, the association became tenfold strong. 

 " On all large estates in these counties, and in the soutli of 



Scotland (Burnes's own country) the bondage system prevails. No 



married labourer is permitted to dwell on these estates, unless he 



enters into a bond to comply with this system." 



We all know how the women in this country from Peshawer to 



Cape Comorin, work in the fields ; so we are, on the authority of Sir 



