Agriculture is the main employment of the natives. In many parts of this peninsula the land is prepared by turning in the buffaloes during the rainy season to trample down weeds and stir the soil, which is afterward harrowed by a coarse rake or thorny shrub, the stubble being burnt and the ash worked in as manure.
But the Chinese are everywhere introducing improved methods. The best quality of rice is transplanted, the plants lying partially covered in the still pools of water between the rectangular ridges marked off for the purpose of irrigation; and rice growing above the rising water looks very like a field of wheat or tall grass. At high-flood seasons it is a pretty sight to see the planters moving about in boats attending to their crops. The growth is almost spontaneous. Little care is needed until the whole family must turn out to drive off the immense flocks of little rice-birds. The rice is sown in June, transplanted in September and harvested late in December or in January. In the fields at this season may be seen the reapers, multitudes of sheaves and stacks of grain. The rice is generally threshed by buffaloes, a hard circle being formed around each stack. The carts have large wheels, four or five feet apart, with the sheaves placed in a small rack. The driver guides the oxen by means of ropes fastened in the septum of their noses, reminding one of the Scripture, “I will put my hook in his nose.”
Sugar is produced almost everywhere, in Siam especially, under the Chinese settlers, its quality yielding to that of no other sugar in the world, so that it is fast becoming one of the most important Siamese exports. Almost all the spices used throughout the world find their early home in the peninsula or the neighboring islands—the laurel-leaf clove; the nutmeg, like a pear tree in size, its nut wrapped in crimson mace and encased in a shell; the cardamom, a plant valuable for its seeds and the principal ingredient in curries and compound spices. A pepper-plantation is a curious sight, the berries growing, not in pods, but hanging down in bunches like currants from a climber trained much like a hop-vine, yielding two annual and very profitable crops. Tea is cultivated in the Laos provinces, and coffee and cotton are also raised. Tobacco is largely grown, and its use is almost universal; even babies in their mothers’ arms are often seen puffing a cigar. A fine aromatic powder, made from the deep golden root of the curcuma, is sold by the boatload in Bangkok; Siamese mothers may be seen in the morning yellowing their children with it for beauty. It is also used to give color to curries, and mixed with quicklime makes the bright pink paste wrapped in seri-leaf around the betel-nut for chewing purposes.
Vegetable-gardens and fruit-orchards surround most of the villages. The neat Chinese gardens near Bangkok are worth a visit. The land is made sufficiently dry by throwing it up in large beds ten to twelve feet high, extending the whole length of the grounds. The deep ditches between have a supply of water even in the dry season, and a simple instrument is used to sprinkle the plants with it several times a day. The gardener lives within the premises, his small dirty hut guarded by a multitude of dogs and a horrible stench of pigsty. The artificial ridges of the paddy-fields beyond, three feet high, make quite comfortable footpaths in the dry season.
THE BREAD-FRUIT.
The Indo-Chinese fruits are of great excellence of flavor, and almost every day of the year furnishes a new variety. The best oranges are plentiful; pineapples are a drug in the market; lemons, citrons, pomegranates are abundant and very cheap. As the season advances, mangoes, guavas, custard-apples and the like follow in quick succession; on some kinds of trees buds, flowers, green and ripened fruit may be found at the same time. The small mahogany-colored mangosteen is perhaps the most popular of tropical fruits. One species of the sac has a fruit weighing from ten to forty pounds, which cut in thick slices will supply a meal to twenty persons, and a single tree will produce a hundred such fruit; the bright yellow wood of this tree is used for dyeing the priests’ robes. The tamarind grows to an enormous height and lives for centuries; under its shade the Siamese assemble for most of their social games. The durian, a child of the forest, has something the appearance of an elm; the large fruit, cased in a thick hard rind as difficult to break as a cocoanut-shell and covered with strong spines, gives a dangerous blow in falling. The five shells within each contain several seeds rather larger than a pigeon’s egg filled with custard-like pulp of a strong odor and unique flavor. The plantain or banana has some forty varieties, with fruit varying greatly in size as well as in flavor. It is the first fruit given to babies, and, the Moslems say, was the gift of Allah to the Prophet in his old age when he lost his teeth. The trees bear fruit but once, and then are followed by others from the same root. The useful bamboo is a tree-like plant with a jointed stem, producing branches with willow-shaped leaves, which wave in the wind, giving an elegant feathery appearance. So rapid is its growth, sometimes two feet in a single day, that the plant attains its height of sixty to seventy feet in a few months. It is said to have seven admirable qualities—strength, lightness, roundness, straightness, smoothness, hollowness and divisibility. The short succulent shoots are served on the table like asparagus, pickled or candied. According to the Chinese proverb, the grains are “more abundant when rice fails.” The stems furnish bottles, buckets, baskets, fishing-rods, posts, bridges, walls, floors, roofs, and even the string that lashes together rafter and beam of the common native house in Indo-China.
