RICE AJSID ITS CULTIVATION. 



546 



CHAPTER VL 



THE CHIEF NUTRITIVE PLANTS OF THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



Rice — Aspects of Rice-Fields at Different Seasons — The Rice-Fields of Ceylon — Ladang and 

 Sawa Rice — Rice in South Carolina — The llice-Bird — Paddy — Maize — When first brought 

 to Europe — Appearance of the Plant — Its Enormous Productiveness — Freedom from Dis- 

 ease — Wide Extent of its Cultivation — Benjamin Franklin's Account of Maize — Millet — 

 The Bread-Fruit— Its Taste— Modes of Cooking— The Banana and Plantain— Their Great 

 Productiveness — The Sago Palm — Manufacture of Sago — Sago Bread — Cheap Living — A 

 Siesta and Starvation — The Cassava, — Yams — The Sweet Potato — Arrow Root — The Taro 

 Root — Tropical Fruits — The Chirimoya — The Litchi — The Mangosteen — The Mango — 

 The Durion — Its Taste and Smell — Large Fruit on Tall Trees. 



OF all the cereals there ivS none that affords food to so many human beings as the 

 Rice-Plant, (^Oryza sativa,) npon whose grains from time immemorial the 

 countless millions of South-eastern Asia have chiefly subsisted. It forms the staple, 

 one might almost say the only food, of a third of the inhabitants of the globe. The 

 failure of the rice crop for a single season in India or China causes a famine compared 

 with which the potato famine of Ireland was nothing. From its primitive seat in 

 India, the rice-plant has gradually spread not only over the whole Tropical World, 

 but far beyond its bounds ; for it thrives alike in the swamps of South Carolina and 

 upon the plains bordering the Danube and the Po, Along the low river banks, in 

 the delta-lands which the rains of the trOpics annually change into a boundless lake, or 

 where, by artificial embankments, the waters of the mountain streams have been col- 

 lected into tanks for irrigation, the rice-plant attains its utmost luxuriance of growth, 

 and but rarely deceives the hopes of the husbandman. 



The aspect of the lowland rice-fields of India and its isles is very different at various 

 seasons of the year. Whore, in Java, for instance, you see to-day long-legged herons 

 gravely stalking over the inundated plain partitioned by small dykes, or a yoke of 

 indolent buffaloes slowly wading through the mud, you will three or four months later 

 be charmed by the view of a gracefully undulating wheat-field. Cords, to which scare- 

 crows are attached, traverse the field in every direction, and converge to a small 

 watch-house, erected on high poles. Here the attentive villager sits, like a spider iu 

 the center of its web, and, by pulling the cords, puts them from time to time into 

 motion, whenever the wind is unwilling to undertake the ofiSce. Then the grotesque 

 and noisy figures begin to rustle and to caper, and whole flocks of the neat little rice- 

 bird or Java sparrow rise on the wing, and hurry off with all the haste of guilty fright. 

 After another month has elapsed, and the waters have long since evaporated or been 

 withdrawn, the harvest takes place, and the rice-fields are enlivened by a motlej? 

 crowd, for all the villagers, old and young, are busy reaping the golden ears. 



