The way in which the rice is reaped when the time for harvest has arrived, depends largely on the state of the fields. If the waters have subsided, it is reaped with the sickle, and bound into sheaves, which are first allowed to dry in the sun, and are then removed by buffalo carts or bullock waggons. But if the fields are still under water, this method is obviously impossible, and besides, there is always a sufficiently large number of leeches, land-crabs and water-snakes moving about in the slimy mud to make the labourer cautious as to where he treads. In this case the people go to the fields in their long narrow canoes. They cut off the ripe heads with a sickle, and drop them into small baskets placed in the bottom of the boat. Great carelessness is often shown by the laughing, gossiping reapers, who drop handful after handful of ripe grain into the water.
PLANTING OUT YOUNG RICE—FOOT OF KORAT HILLS.
When the threshing commences, the services of the ever useful buffalo are once more demanded. A threshing floor is first prepared. A piece of ground is cleared, and then covered with a plaster made of soil, cow-dung, and water. After a few days this pasty mixture sets into a hard, firm coating. A tall, straight bamboo is erected in the centre of the floor, and a few good heads of rice are fastened at the top for the birds to eat. A roughly carved figure of a man, jokingly christened "the grandfather," is added by way of decoration. Two buffaloes are used, which are yoked side by side. The inner one is loosely fastened on the inside to the central pole, and on the outside to his fellow-worker, while both are guided by a half-naked man or boy, who runs round and round behind the animals, holding on to the tail of the outer one. The threshing takes place on moonlight nights, and rarely does the moon shine on a more interesting or curious scene. The buffaloes pace on in their monotonous round, regardless of their screaming driver or of his vigorous jerking of their hindmost appendages. In the heaps of straw tumble all the merry, laughing urchins of the neighbourhood. The air resounds with the sounds of music, fiddles and tom-toms, dulcimers and drums. Joke and song pass from mouth to mouth. Here glows the red end of a cigarette; there a shiny brown back glistens in the moonlight. The large meek eyes of the animals stare through the gloom. Cocoa-nut oil lanterns vie with the ruddy flames of the fitful bonfires in lending more light to the scene, but rarely do more than tinge their own dark smoke a tawny hue. Fire-flies light up the deep shadows under the long drooping leaves of the palms, or mirror their own pale light in the bits of shiny straw that flutter in the evening breeze. Through all these varied shades of semi-darkness come laughter and song, the cry of the driver, the creaking of the pole, the firm, steady footfall of the patient beasts, the chirping of crickets, the croaking of frogs, and a million other sounds that tell of life and motion in the late hours of a tropical night.
PLOUGHING A RICE-FIELD.
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.