An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon in the East Indies: Together with an Account of the Detaining in Captivity the Author and Divers other Englishmen Now Living There, and of the Author's Miraculous EscapeKnox, Robert
History
An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon in the East Indies: Together with an Account of the Detaining in Captivity the Author and Divers other Englishmen Now Living There, and of the Author's Miraculous Escape
Knox, Robert
Sri Lanka -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800; Sri Lanka -- Social life and customs
[Rice.] Of Rice they have several sorts, and called by several names
according to the different times of their ripening: However in tast
little disagreeing from one another. Some will require seven Months
before it come to maturity, called Mauvi; some six, Hauteal; others
will ripen in five, Honorowal; others in four, Henit; and others in
three, Aulfancol: The price of all these is one and the same. That
which is soonest ripe, is most savoury to the tast; but yieldeth
the least increase. It may be asked then, why any other sort of Rice
is sown, but that which is longest a Ripening, seeing it brings in
most Profit? In answer to this, you must know, [Grows in Water. Their
Ingenuity in watering their Corn Lands.] That all these sorts of Rice
do absolutely require Water to grow in, all the while they stand; so
that the Inhabitants take great pains in procuring and saving water
for their Grounds, and in making Conveyances of Water from their Rivers
and Ponds into their Lands, which they are very ingenious in; also in
levelling their Corn Lands, which must be as smooth as a Bowling-Green,
that the Water may cover all over. Neither are their steep and Hilly
Lands uncapable of being thus overflown with Water. For the doing of
which they use this Art. They level these Hills into narrow Allies,
some three; some eight foot wide one beneath another, according to the
steepness of the Hills, working and digging them in that fashion that
they lye smooth and flat, like so many Stairs up the Hills one above
another. The Waters at the top of the Hills falling down wards are
let into these Allies, and so successively by running out of one into
another, water all; first the higher Lands, and then the lower. The
highest Allies having such a quantity of Water as may suffice to
cover them, the rest runs over unto the next, and that having its
proportion, unto the next, and so by degrees it falls into all these
hanging parcels of Ground. These Waters last sometimes a longer, and
sometimes a shorter Season. [Why they do not alwayes sow the best kind
of Rice.] Now the Rice they sow is according as they foresee their
stock of Water will last. It will sometimes last them two or three,
or four or five Months, more or less; the Rice therefore they chuse
to cast into the Ground, is of that sort that may answer the duration
of the Water. For all their Crop would be spoilt if the Water should
fail them before their Corn grew ripe. If they foresee their Water
will hold out long, then they sow the best and most profitable Rice,
viz. that which is longest a ripening; but if it will not, they must
be content to sow of the worser sorts; that is, those that are sooner
ripe. Again, they are forced sometimes to sow this younger Rice,
for the preventing the damage it might otherwise meet with, if it
should stand longer. For their Fields are all in common, which after
they have sown, they enclose till Harvest; But as soon as the Corn
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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