144 VIEW OF TIIE STATE OF AGRICULTURE IN THE BRITISH 
equal to one cent and a half of a dollar per day and not found. 
This immense economy of manual labour in Louisiana shews but 
too clearly the advantage to be obtained in the use of suitable helps 
and implements. Sixty stout mules, thirteen ploughs, and about a 
hundred and fifty hands, or slaves, suffices for the cultivation of six - 
hundred acres of canes and two hundred of Indian corn, besides cut¬ 
ting a sufficiency of wood for the steam engine and range of concen¬ 
trating coppers. But manuel labor is not wasted there as in most of 
the sugar growing countries, particularly on this side of the Cape of 
Good Hope. There, the drills or furrows are opened with ploughs, 
there the grasses and weeds are extirpated by the same implements 
or by harrows, there the banking of the canes so slow in turning up, 
and so expensive in making here, is (lone with a subsoil plough, which 
not only throws up a bank for the present purpose but brings up to 
the surface, there to remain exposed to the influence of the atmos¬ 
phere for some months, a fresh body of earth held in readiness for the 
next crop. With these appliances, and with thorough drainage where 
needed, it is that the Louisiana planters obtain from unripe canes, 
in a season of nine or ten months, more than double the quantity of 
sugar from a given extent of ground than in any place within the 
tropics. 
The cultivation of the land .as a business, except in raising paddy 
or rice, cannot be said to exist at Malacca. Nothing indicates that 
the Portuguese or the Dutch paid any attention to the soil, for there 
remains no vestige of any attempt at cultivation. And yet there is 
under British jurisdiction one thousand square miles of land well 
adapted to almost every description of tropical crops, and which al¬ 
most wholly remains in a state of nature. Around the town of 
Malacca for a few miles are extensive paddy fields planted chiefly 
by Malays, but elsewhere not a plantation is to be found. The 
Chinese, natives of the place, who resort to Singapore in search 
of fortune and who as merchants, shopkeepers, and brokers, are 
the life of that commercial town, after a successful career return, 
whilst yet under middle age, to their Elysium , their beloved Malacca, 
to pass the remainder of their lives. But here they are as inactive 
