The present cultivators, who show a high degree of intelligence in many of their operations, in cultivating their staple, rice, for example, actually expend more labour on their land, and work much more constantly than any hirelings would do; as at Jalajala, out of upwards of a hundred labourers in the village who had no other employment or source of revenue but their labour, not above a third of the able-bodied men mustered in the fields when the labours of the day began in the morning; and I understood from the owner of the estate, that under no circumstances could he prevail on the whole body of labourers to muster, nor, so long as their rice lasts, will they work; it is only when that fails, and they will starve if they do not exert themselves, that they will undergo hard labour in the fields under the broiling sun. CHAPTER XIX. Very few of the native Indians or Mestizos are possessed of much wealth, according to British ideas of the term, although there are some of the latter class who are considered among themselves as very well off, if their savings amount to from five to twenty thousand dollars; and when they reach fifty thousand dollars, they are looked upon as rich capitalists. In Manilla, there are one or two of these Mestizo traders whose fortunes amount to more than this; but such occurances are rare, and are seldom heard of. Many of these amounts have been collected together by their possessors by their engaging in a sort of usurious money-lending or banking business with the poverty-struck cultivators of the soil, by advancing seed to many of them for their paddy fields, and making the hard condition of exacting in return about one half of the produce of the ensuing crop. But perhaps these money-lenders are, to a certain extent, necessary to supply the wants of an improvident and careless race, these habits being besetting sins of the Indian character; yet there can be little doubt that the money acquired by such a usurious repayment of the sums advanced, does an immense deal of harm, and lessens the natural independence of the Indians who are so unfortunate as to fall into the clutches of the money-lender. Should a poor Indian, the possessor of a patch of paddy-land capable of producing very little more than is required to feed his family, once run short of seed, he has a very hard battle to fight with the soil before he is able to get that debt cleared off, should his neighbours be too poor to assist him, as he must then have recourse to the usurer. For although, through his greater efforts and improved cultivation, he may produce much more paddy than his land had done before, yet he is seldom able to save enough for seed from the moiety of the produce which his appetite restricted to live upon, as the other half must go to repay the usurer who advanced him seed, or money to purchase it.