By the latter the advantage is enjoyed of the division of labor.
The dams are built of permanent material; every work is rapidly
completed; the night-fires blaze in the lofty watch-house,, while
the shouts of the watchers scare the wild beasts from the crops.
Hundreds of children are daily screaming from their high perches
to scare away the birds. Rattles worked by long lines extend in
every direction, unceasingly pulled by the people in the
watch-houses; wind-clackers (similar to our cherry-clackers) are
whirling in all places; and by the division of the toil among a
multitude the individual work proceeds without fatigue.
Every native is perfectly aware of this advantage in rice
cultivation; and were the supply of water ensured to them by the
repair of a principal tank, they would gather around its margin.
The thorny jungles would soon disappear from the surface of the
ground, and a densely-populated and prosperous district would
again exist where all has been a wilderness for a thousand years.
The system of rice cultivation is exceedingly laborious. The
first consideration being a supply of water, the second is a
perfect level, or series of levels, to be irrigated. Thus a
hill-side must be terraced out into a succession of platforms or
steps; and a plain, however apparently flat, must, by the
requisite embankments, be reduced to the most perfect surface.
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