1025 A JOURNEY FROM MADRAS THROUGH 
CHAPTER dry field, and supplies all the lower ranks of society with their 
common food. Among them, it is reckoned the most wholesome 
May 20, &c. and invigorating food for labouring people ; and in every country, 
most fortunately, a similar prejudice appears to prevail, the most 
common grain being always reckoned the nourishment most fit for 
the labourer. Habit seems to be able to render every kind of grain 
sufficiently wholesome; but the stomach is not able, without incon- 
venience, to bear a change. Hence the labourer, accustomed to 
live on the cheapest grain of the country, finds it agree with his 
stomach ; but he becomes disordered when first compelled or in- 
duced to try another food. He therefore very naturally concludes, 
that his usual fare is the most wholesome ; while, for similar rea- 
sons, a labourer from another country will justly reprobate it. My 
Bengal and Madras servants, who have been accustomed to live upon 
rice, look upon the Ragy as execrable food, and, in fact, would ex- 
perience great inconvenience were they compelled to live on it. 
Ragy harvest. The Ragy is reaped by the sickle, and the straw is cut within ‘ 
four inches of the ground. For three days the handfuls are left on 
the field ; and then, without being bound up in sheaves, are stacked, 
and the whole is well thatched. At any convenient time within 
three months, it is opened, dried two days in the sun, and then 
trodden out by oxen. The seed, having been thoroughly dried in 
the sun, is preserved in straw Mudies. The remainder is put into 
pits, or Hagays ; where, if care has been taken to dig the pit in 
a dry soil, it will keep in perfect preservation for ten years. 
Manner of Ragy is always ground into flour, as wanted, by means of a hand- 
£^yfox § use. mill, called Visacallu. In this operation it loses nothing by mea- 
sure ; so that a Candaca of Ragy is reckoned to contain as much 
nourishment as two Candacas of Paddy. The flour is dressed in va- 
rious ways. The most common are, a kind of pudding called San- 
gutty , and two kinds of cakes, called Ruty and Doshy , both of which 
are fried in oil. 
Straw of For all kinds of cattle, the Ragy straw is here reckoned superior 
Ragy. 
I 
