so 
A JOURNEY FROM MADRAS THROUGH 
Advantages 
of the dif- 
ferent crops. 
Rice harvest. 
CHAPTER sown Niragy about the 30th of Asuja, or 18th of October, and in a 
month afterwards is transplanted. The Maysha Caru transplanted 
May 20, &c. rice is also sown as watered seedlings, about the 15th of Vaisdkha , or 
8th of May, and about a month afterwards is transplanted. 
The regular Caru crop of the transplanted cultivation, does not 
interfere with a preceding crop of pulse ; but this is lost, when 
from want of stock sufficient to cultivate it at the proper time, the 
early or late seasons are adopted. But the various modes of cul- 
tivating the rice gives a great advantage to the farmer ; as by di- 
viding the labour over a great part of the year, fewer hands and less 
stock are required to cultivate the same extent of ground, than if 
there was only one seed time, and one harvest. 
The manner of reaping and preserving all the kinds of rice is 
nearly the same. About a week before the corn is fit for reaping, 
the water is let off, that the ground may dry. The corn is cut 
down about four inches from the ground with a reaping-hook, 
called Cudugalu, or Cudagu . (Plate II. Fig. %) Without being 
bound up in sheaves, it is put into small stacks, about twelve feet 
high; in which the stalks are placed outwards, and the ears inwards. 
Here the corn remains a week, or, if it rain, fourteen days. It is 
then spread out on a thrashing-floor, made smooth with clay, cow- 
dung, and water ; and is trodden out by driving bullocks over it. 
If there has been rain, the corn, after having been thrashed, must 
be dried in the sun ; but in dry weather this trouble is unnecessary. 
It is then put up in heaps called Rashy , which contain about 60 
Candacas, or 334 bushels. The heap, as I have before mentioned, is 
marked with clay, and is carefully covered with straw. A trench 
is then dug round it, to keep off the water. For twenty or thirty 
days, till the division of the crop between the government and the 
cultivator takes place, the corn is allowed to remain in the heap. 
The grain is always preserved in the husk, or, as the English in 
India say, in Paddy; the term rice being appropriated to the grain 
separated from the husks, a distinction which I shall always observe. 
Manner of 
preserving 
nee. 
