Indian AgricuUwe in its Physical Aspects. 43 
her part, and more frequently than not working on rather than 
ahove the ground — a group of scantily clad dusky men and women, 
here squatting down and busily weeding ; here, in a similar 
position, cutting a crop with hand and sickle, and laying the 
handfuls side by side until a bundle is gi-adually formed ; there 
driving along the pair or more of oxen (not horses) that pull the 
plough which lightly runs through the top surface of the soil but 
turns no furrow over ; there throwing with wicker basket-scoops 
the water from an adjacent pool or running channel on to the 
growing crop, or raising it from a well in leathern buckets 
drawn up by bullocks with a rope and pulley. In place of 
grazing herds in green fields, there are wandering troops of thin 
half-starved cattle that roam over the barren tracks, picking up 
what they can, though hardly a green spot seems to reward 
their search, or goats that pull down 'and pluck every green 
bough or twig that offers itself, or buffaloes cooling their hides 
in muddy pools, from which if possible they will allow only their 
heads to emerge. 
As we pass on, other changes are noticed : what is now in 
the cold season a tiny stream, and in the hot season may be dried 
up altogether, will in the rainy period swell into a vast swift- 
flowing torrent, and cover the wide bed which now lies exposed. 
Elsewhere a canal, or its numerous branches, carried off by en- 
gineering skill from some gi-eat river, brings the all essential 
water that the crops require, and without which agiiculture 
would in many parts be at a standstill for the greater portion of 
the year. Yet another feature cannot fail to strike the eye : in 
some districts are vast plains coated with a snow-like crust and 
devoid of all vegetation. These are the well-known reli or usar 
tracts, the bringing of which into cultivation has baffled nearly 
eveiy effort, but the reclamation of which would, over many 
thousand acres, supply food for the wants of an ever-pressing 
population. 
As the days and the weeks go by we have no longer the 
changes of a fickle English climate, with its alternation of rain 
and sunshine, but a steady continuance of a long series of days 
one like the other, but always hot ; then, as March is reached, 
it becomes hotter and hotter, until, when all the countiy presents 
at length a bumt-up appearance, there comes, about the end of 
June or early in July, a tremendous change. The rains descend 
in torrents, the rivers become swollen and flood the land, and coat 
the barren spots, as if by magic, with a green sward. 
Such are, veiy briefly, some of the most prominent features 
that characterise the external appearance of Indian agriculture. 
But this, though a sketch of what may be seen, is not true by anv 
