NATURAL PRODUCTIONS. 
81 
The Carolina rice is certainly whiter in colour and larger 
in grain than that grown here, hut it is certainly not 
anything like so sweet, or so nutritious, and tliere is no 
doubt that if proper husking-mills were used here, the 
Trinidad rice would be equally large and white with 
the Carolina. But the people who grow the rice are 
poor, and have no mills, but simply and laboriously 
separate the husk from the rice by pounding it in a 
wooden mortar, thus breaking and discolouring it by 
the process. 
Pace is like maize, impoverishing to the soil, and this 
not only because of what it takes from the soil chemi- 
cally, but by reason of the close shaving given to the 
land before it is sown. The people clear the land of 
everything, so that a patch about to be sown in rice is 
as clean as if swept with a broom. Some scatter the 
seed, and chop it into the ground with the cutlass, 
others drop a small handful into a hole made by the 
point of a cutlass, and no doubt both ways are veiy 
primitive and Avasteful, compared with sowing by a 
proper drill. But when people have no drill, they do 
the best they can. The rice is sown about Sejiteniber, 
on lands without regard to their being hilly, or lying low, 
as the rains of September, November, and I)ecemb('r 
are so heavy and continuous as to give all the moisture, 
necessary for so water loving a plant as rice. About 
January the weather takes up, the rains cease, the sun 
shines, and the rice changes its garb of green for one 
of gold. 
The picking of the rice requires some little skill, and 
a considerable amount of patience. The reaper dexter- 
ously nips ott’ the stalk with thumb and finger, about 
six inches below the grain ; continuing this process 
until his left hand is full, he then ties it iq> slrongly, 
and carries it to the heap. The great thing is to be 
careful not to shake the rice, as the precious grain is 
ready to drop, and so be lost. 
The rice is the most valued of provisions, as it is the 
G 
