The rice is winnowed by the wind as it is poured from one wide shallow basket to another, and as the chaff flies about in the sunlight its gilded hues mingle with the vivid green of the surrounding landscape, to form behind the well-proportioned forms of the girls and women, a background which is unique in its brilliant combinations of light and colour. The grain is stored in large baskets made of cane and plastered outside with mud. These stand on a raised platform, and are covered by a roof made of leaves. The eye of the farmer grows bright as he regards his well-filled rice-bins, for by their number and contents does he measure his wealth. The farmers live together in small villages for mutual protection; but in spite of all their precautions, those who inhabit the more remote portions of the country suffer severely from the depredations of bands of dacoits. During the night, too, the herds of cattle often break out and wander over the fields, doing irreparable damage as they wander from one plantation to another, the absence of all hedges or fences rendering their wanderings merely a matter of choice to themselves. The rice-mills of Bangkok are constructed after European models, and contain modern machinery; but outside the capital, the primitive mill of earlier days still survives. This is simply a short, broad stump of a tree with a conical hollow inside, the apex of the cone being near the ground. A long lever carries at one end a heavy wooden hammer-head, which falls into the hollow of the stem. It is raised by placing the foot on the other end of the lever, and then jumping up so as to press upon the lever with the whole weight of the body. The women are generally employed in this work, and in any small village you can hear the steady thump, thump of the hammers from morning to night, and see the girls and young women jumping on and off the short end of the lever, with an almost painful regularity and precision. A great deal of the rice grown in some of the northern provinces is sent to Luang Prabang, the local supply there being insufficient for the wants of the inhabitants. It is sent down the River Mekong on huge rice-rafts made of bamboo. It takes a fairly large crew to manage one of these rafts, and as several members of the party are sure to have a wife or child with them, the whole structure somewhat resembles a floating village. The most usual measurements of these rafts are one hundred and twenty feet long and about thirty feet beam. They are very difficult to manage, but so skilful are the native boatmen, that by means of a number of oars rigged fore and aft, they generally succeed in taking their cumbersome craft through the numerous rapids and eddies, with only occasional or trifling loss of their valuable cargo.