From the abundance of rain in the warm season, the country, considering the inequality of its surface, is uncommonly productive of grain. Wherever the land can be levelled into terraces, however narrow, it is exceedingly favourable for transplanted rice, which ripens after the rains have ceased, so that the harvest is never injured; and, as most of these terraces can be supplied at pleasure with water from springs, the crops are uncommonly certain. This is by far the most valuable land, and is that in which all the officers and servants of the Crown are paid, and from whence all endowments are made. In some parts the same land gives a winter crop of wheat and barley; but in most places this is most judiciously omitted. Where the land is too steep to be conveniently formed into terraces, or where this operation has been neglected, the fields are called Kuriya, {74} and are generally cultivated after fallows, by any person that chooses to occupy them, on paying a certain sum by the head, and not according to the extent of land. The hoe is chiefly used, and the produce is rice, sown broadcast, maize, cotton, _kurthi_, _bhot mash_, and _mash kalai_, three kinds of pulse, that, without seeing, I cannot pretend to specify; _ture_, a kind of mustard, which I cannot specify; _manjit_, or Indian madder, wheat, barley, and sugar cane. The manjit, or Indian madder, seems to be of two kinds; the _Rubia cordata_ of Wildenow, and a species of Rubia, not described in the common systems of botany. Both seem to be equally fit for the purpose, and grow in the same manner. It is cultivated exactly as cotton is among the hills. The ground is cleared and laboured in spring, and, when the first rains commence, the field is sown broadcast with rice, having intermixed the seed of manjit or of cotton. When the rice ripens, it is cut. The manjit is allowed to grew four or five years; and, after the second year, the stems are annually cut down to the root. They are four or five cubits long, and lie flat on the ground. When cut, they are stript of the leaves, and rolled up for sale.