it- We discover neither in Java, nor in any other
country of the Archipelago, any of those enormous
tanks of the southern part of Hindustan, on which
the agriculture of whole provinces entirely depends.
Neither does any portion of the agriculture of the
Indian islands depend on the overflowing of rivers,
as does that of Egypt and Bengal. The principal
care of the husbandman is to dam the brooks and
mountain streams as they descend from the hills,
arid before the difficulty has occurred which would
be presented by their passage through the deep
ravines, into which they would naturally flow. From
this circumstance the crests of the mountains, and
the valleys at the foot of them, the lands of greatest,
fertility, are also those best supplied with water
; arid here necessarily are presented the finest
and richest scenes of Javanese husbandry. The
slopes of the higher mountains and the smaller
hills are here formed into terraces highly cultivated,
and the valleys rendered almost impassable
from the frequency of the water courses. Not an
accessible 6pot is to be seen in the season that is
not covered with a rich harvest; and if we take
into account—the brilliant tints of an equatorial
sky,—-the vicinity of mountains of ten thousand
feet high, the more elevated portions of which are
covered with forests of perpetual verdure,—valleys
thickly strewed with groves of fruit trees, hiding
the cottages of the peasantry,—-together with-the
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peculiar richness of the rice crop itself, which far
excels that of all the other Cereal grammax vre may
imagine that rural industry cannot well be contemplated,
in any portion of the globe, to greater advantage.
Occasionally the process of irrigation is somewhat
less simple than now represented. This
is the case when the larger rivers are dammed after
their descent into the plain. An officer of
the government then assumes the superintendence
of the distribution of water, and receives in recompense
a commission, payable in kind on the amount
of the crop. We shall see, in another place, that
the sovereigns of Bali claim the land-tax on this
principle.
In the existing state of society and rural industry
in Java, and other countries, it may be safely asserted,
that the progress of agriculture chiefly rests
on the facilities afforded to the irrigation of the land.
The brooks and rivers of Java, for example, have
yet by no means been taken the greatest advantage
of, and in many „situations, tanks, similar to those
of the Deccan, might be constructed with little difficulty.
This is one of those subjects, the advantages
of which the natives fully comprehend, and
such is their sph’it and .intelligence relating to it,
that a very^httle eneoi^agement induces them to
undertake, witffi avidity t^e formation of a drain, of
the cutting^%n|mal.^ yWhh wonderfully little la-
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