[Rice land production.] A quinon of the best rice land is worth from sixty to one hundred dollars ($5.50 to $9 per acre).  Rice fields on rising grounds are dearest, as they are not exposed to devastating floods as are those in the plain, and may be treated so as to insure the ripening of the fruit at the time when the highest price is to be obtained.

[The harvest.] A ganta of rice is sufficient to plant four topones (1 topon = 1 loan); from which 100 manojos (bundles) are gathered, each of which yields half a ganta of rice.  The old ganta of Naga, however, being equal to a modern ganta and a half, the produce may be calculated at 75 cavanes per quinon, about 9 3/4 bushels per acre. [109] In books 250 cavanes are usually stated to be the average produce of a quinon; but that is an exaggeration.  The fertility of the fields certainly varies very much; but, when it is considered that the land in the Philippines is never fertilized, but depends, for the maintenance of its vitality, exclusively upon the overflowing of the mud which is washed down from the mountains, it may be believed that the first numbers better express the true average.  In Java the harvest, in many provinces, amounts to only 50 cavanes per quinon; in some, indeed, to three times this amount; and in China, with the most careful culture and abundant manure, to 180 cabanes. [110] [Sweet potatoes.] Besides rice, they cultivate the camote (sweet potato, Convolvulus batatas).  This flourishes like a weed; indeed, it is sometimes planted for the purpose of eradicating the weeds from soil intended for coffee or cacao.  It spreads out into a thick carpet, and is an inexhaustible storehouse to its owner, who, the whole year through, can supply his wants from his field.  Gabi (Caladium), Ubi (Dioscorea), maize, and other kinds of grain, are likewise cultivated.

[Cattle and horses.] After the rice harvest the carabaos, horses, and bullocks, are allowed to graze in the fields.  During the rice culture they remain in the gogonales, cane-fields which arise in places once cultivated for mountain-rice and afterwards abandoned. (Gogo is the name of a cane 7 to 8 feet high, Saccharum sp.).  Transport then is almost impossible, because during the rainy season the roads are impassable, and the cattle find nothing to eat.  The native does not feed his beast, but allows it to die when it cannot support itself.  In the wet season of the year it frequently happens that a carabao falls down from starvation whilst drawing a cart.  A carabao costs from $7 to $10; a horse $10 to $20; and a cow $6 to $8.  Very fine horses are valued at from $30 to $50, and occasionally as much as $80; but the native horses are not esteemed in Manila, because they have no stamina.  The bad water, the bad hay, and the great heat of the place at once point out the reason; otherwise it would be profitable to export horses in favorable seasons to Manila, where they would fetch twice their value.  According to Morga, there were neither horses nor asses on the Island until the Spaniards imported them from China and New Spain. [111] They were at first small and vicious.  Horses were imported also from Japan, “not swift but powerful, with large heads and thick manes, looking like Friesland horses;” [112] and the breed improved rapidly.  Those born in the country, mostly cross-breeds, drive well.