The island of Java is a great agricultural country; its soil is the grand source of its wealth. In its cultivation the inhabitants exert their chief industry, and upon its produce they rely, not only for their subsistence, but the few articles of foreign luxury or convenience which they purchase. The Javans are a nation of husbandmen, and exhibit that simple structure of society incident to such a stage of its progress. To the crop the mechanic looks immediately for his wages, the soldier for his pay, the magistrate for his salary, the priest for his stipend (or jákat), and the government for its tribute. The wealth of a province or village is measured by the extent and fertility of its land, its facilities for rice irrigation, and the number of its buffaloes.
When government wishes to raise supplies from particular districts, it does not enquire how many rupees or dollars it can yield in taxes, but what contribution of rice or maize it can furnish, and the impost is assessed accordingly: the officer of revenue becomes a surveyor of land or a measurer of produce, and the fruits of the harvest are brought immediately into the ways and means of the treasury. When a chief gives his assistance in the police or the magistracy, he is paid by so much village land, or the rent of so much land realized in produce; and a native prince has no other means of pensioning a favourite or rewarding a useful servant. "Be it known to the high officers of my palace, to my Bopátis (regents), and to my Mántris (petite noblesse)," says a Javan patent of nobility granted by Sultan Hamángku Búana, "that I have given this letter to my servant to raise him from the earth, bestowing upon him, for his subsistence, lands to the amount of eleven hundred cháchas, the labour of eleven hundred men." By the population returns, and by the number of leases granted under the late settlement, it appears, that sometimes there is not more than a tenth part of the inhabitants employed in any other branch of industry. Out of a population of 243,268 in the Priáng'en regencies, 209,125 are stated as employed in agriculture. In Surabáya, the proportion of householders who are cultivators, is to the rest of the inhabitants as 32,618 to 634; in Semárang, as 58,206 to 21,404; in Rembang it is as 103,230 to 55,300; and in other districts there are considerable variations: but it rarely happens, that the people employed in trade, in manufactures, in handicrafts, or other avocations, amount to a half of those engaged in agriculture, or a third of the whole population. The proportion, on an average, may be stated as three and a half or four to one. In England, it is well known, the ratio is reversed, its agricultural population being to its general population as one to three or two and a half. By the surveys lately made under the orders of the British government, we are enabled to describe the processes of Javan agriculture, and to state its results with more accuracy and in greater detail, than can be attained on many subjects of superior public interest. If we avail ourselves of these means pretty largely, it is not so much in the hope of increasing the stock of agricultural knowledge, as of assisting the reader to form an estimate of the character, habits, wants, and resources of the Javan.
The soil of Java, though in many parts much neglected, is remarkable for the abundance and variety of its productions. With very little care or exertion on the part of the cultivator, it yields all that the wants of the island demand, and is capable of supplying resources far above any thing that the indolence or ignorance of the people, either oppressed under the despotism of their own sovereigns, or harassed by the rapacity of strangers, have yet permitted them to enjoy. Lying under a tropical sun, it produces, as before observed, all the fruits of a tropical climate; while, in many districts, its mountains and eminences make up for the difference of latitude, and give it, though only a few degrees from the line, all the advantages of temperate regions. The bámbu, the cocoa-nut tree, the sugar-cane, the cotton tree, and the coffee plant, here flourish in the greatest luxuriance, and yield products of the best quality. Rice, the great staple of subsistence, covers the slopes of mountains and the low fields, and gives a return of thirty, forty, or fifty fold; while maize, or even wheat and rye, and the other plants of Europe, may be cultivated to advantage on high and inland situations. Such is the fertility of the soil, that in some places after yielding two, and sometimes three crops in the year, it is not necessary even to change the culture. Water, which is so much wanted, and which is seldom found in requisite abundance in tropical regions, here flows in the greatest plenty. The cultivator who has prepared his sáwah, or rice field, within its reach, diverts part of it from its channel, spreads it out into numerous canals of irrigation, and thus procures from it, under a scorching sun, the verdure of the rainy season, and in due time a plentiful harvest. Nothing can be conceived more beautiful to the eye, or more gratifying to the imagination, than the prospect of the rich variety of hill and dale, of rich plantations and fruit trees or forests, of natural streams and artificial currents, which presents itself to the eye in several of the eastern and middle provinces, at some distance from the coast. In some parts of Kedú, Banyumás, Semárang, Pasúruan, and Málang, it is difficult to say whether the admirer of landscape, or the cultivator of the ground, will be most gratified by the view. The whole country, as seen from mountains of considerable elevation, appears a rich, diversified, and well watered garden, animated with villages, interspersed with the most luxuriant fields, and covered with the freshest verdure.
Over far the greater part, seven-eighths of the island, the soil is either entirely neglected or badly cultivated, and the population scanty. It is by the produce of the remaining eighth that the whole of the nation is supported; and it is probable that, if it were all under cultivation, no area of land of the same extent, in any other quarter of the globe, could exceed it, either in quantity, variety, or value of its vegetable productions. The kind of husbandry in different districts (as shall be mentioned afterwards more particularly) depends upon the nature and elevation of the ground, and the facilities for natural or artificial irrigation. The best lands are those situated in the vallies of the higher districts, or on the slopes of mountains, and on the plains stretching from them, as such lands are continually enriched with accessions of new earth washed down from the hills by the periodical rains. The poorest soil is that found on the ranges of low hills, termed kéndang, extending along many districts, and particularly in the southern division of the island; but in no part is it so sterile or ungrateful, as not to afford a liberal return for the labour bestowed upon its cultivation, especially if a supply of water can be by any means directed upon it.
But when nature does much for a country, its inhabitants are sometimes contented to do little, and, satisfied with its common gifts, neglect to improve them into the means of dignity or comfort. The peasantry of Java, easily procuring the necessaries of life, seldom aim at improvement of their condition. Rice is the principal food of all classes of the people, and the great staple of their agriculture. Of this necessary article, it is calculated that a labourer can, in ordinary circumstances, earn from four to five kátis a day; and a káti being equivalent to one pound and a quarter avoirdupois, is reckoned a sufficient allowance for the daily subsistence of an adult in these regions. The labour of the women on Java is estimated almost as highly as that of the men, and thus a married couple can maintain eight or ten persons; and as a family seldom exceeds half that number, they have commonly half of their earnings applicable for the purchase of little comforts, for implements of agriculture, for clothing and lodging. The two last articles cannot be expensive in a country where the children generally go naked, and where the simplest structure possible is sufficient to afford the requisite protection against the elements.
The price of rice, which thus becomes of importance to the labourer, varies in different parts of the island, according to the fertility of the district where it is produced, its situation with regard to a market, or its distance from one of the numerous provincial capitals. As the means of transport, by which the abundance of one district might be conveyed to supply the deficiencies of another, and to equalize the distribution of the general stock, are few and laborious, this variation of price is sometimes very considerable: even in the same district there are great variations, according to the nature of the crop. In the Native Provinces, a píkul (weighing 133⅓ lbs. English) sometimes sells below the fourth part of a Spanish dollar, and at other times for more than two Spanish dollars; but in common years, and at an average over the whole island, including the capital, the estimate may be taken at thirty Spanish dollars the kóyan of thirty píkuls, or three thousand kútis. A kúti of rice, according to this estimate, may be sold to the consumer, after allowing a sufficient profit to the retail merchant, for much less than a penny.
But though the price of this common article of subsistence may be of some consequence to the Javan labourer, when he wants to make any purchase with his surplus portion, he is rendered independent of the fluctuations of the market for his necessary food, by the mode in which he procures it. He is generally the cultivator of the soil; and while he admits that law of custom, which assigns to the superior a certain share of the produce, he claims an equal right himself to the remainder, which is generally sufficient to support himself and his family: and he sometimes finds in this law of custom, sanctioned by the interest of both parties, a security in the possession of his lands, and a barrier against the arbitrary exactions of his chief, which could scarcely be expected under the capricious despotism of a Mahomedan government. In addition to this reserved share, he raises on his own account, if he is industrious, within what may be termed the cottage farm, all the vegetables, fruit, and poultry requisite for his own consumption. His wife invariably manufactures the slight articles of clothing, which, in such a climate, the common people are in the habit of wearing. What can be spared of the fruits of their joint industry from the supply of their immediate wants, is carried to market, and exchanged for a little salt fish, dried meat, or for other trifling comforts, hoarded as a store for the purchase of an ox or a buffalo, or expended in procuring materials for repairing the hut and mending the implements of husbandry.
The farming stock of the cultivator is as limited as his wants are few and his cottage inartificial: it usually consists of a pair of buffaloes or oxen, and a few rude implements of husbandry. There is a small proportion of sheep and goats on the island; but, with the exception of poultry, no kind of live stock is reared exclusively either for the butcher or the dairy. By the returns made in 1813 of the stock and cattle of the provinces under the British government, containing a population of nearly two millions and a half, it was found that there were only about five thousand sheep and twenty-four thousand goats. The number of buffaloes, by the same return, and in the same space, was stated at 402,054, and of oxen at 122,691. Horses abound in the island, but are principally employed about the capitals, and not in husbandry, further than in the transport of produce from one district to another.
The buffalo and ox are used for ploughing. The former is of a smaller size than the buffalo of Sumatra and the Peninsula, though larger than that of Bengal and of the islands lying eastward of Java. It is a strong tractable animal, capable of long and continued exertion, but it cannot bear the heat of the mid-day sun. It is shy of Europeans, but submits to be managed by the smallest child of the family in which it is domesticated. The buffalo is either black or white: the former is larger and generally considered superior. In the Súnda, or western and mountainous districts, nine out of ten are white, which is not at all the case in the low countries; no essential difference in the breed has been discovered to be connected with this remarkable distinction of colour. The usual price of a buffalo in the western districts is about twenty-four rupees for the black, and twenty rupees for the white; in the eastern districts the price varies from twelve to sixteen rupees. The Súnda term for a buffalo is múnding; the Javan, máisa and kébo: and in compliment to Laléan, the prince who is supposed to have introduced cultivation into the Súnda districts, that prince and his successors on the Súnda throne are distinguished by the appellation Múnding or Máisa. The name of the individual sovereigns enters into a compound with these general terms for the dynasty, and they are called Máisa-laléan, Múnding-sári, and so of others.
The ox of Java derives its origin from the Indian breed. Two varieties are common: that which is called the Javan ox has considerably degenerated; the other, which is termed the Bengal or Surat ox, is distinguished by a lump on the shoulder, and retains in his superior strength other traces of his origin. The bull after castration is used as a beast of burden, for the draught, and sometimes for the stall. Cows are chiefly employed in husbandry, and are particularly useful to the poorer class; but in the sáwah and the extensive inundated plantations of the low districts of the island, the superior bulk and strength of the buffalo is indispensable. Eastward of Pasúruan, however, the lands are ploughed by oxen and cows exclusively. The wild breed, termed bánténg, is found principally in the forests of that quarter and in Báli, although it occurs also in other parts; a remarkable change takes place in the appearance of this animal after castration, the colour in a few months invariably becoming red.