He generally accompanies you in your morning ride, shows you your new lands, consults with you about throwing up exhausted fields, and is generally a sort of farm-bailiff or confidential land-steward.  Where he is an honest, intelligent, and loyal man, he takes half the care and work off your shoulders.  Such men are however rare, and if not very closely looked after, they are apt to abuse their position, and often harass the ryots needlessly, looking more to the feathering of their own nests than the advancement of your interests.

The only Jemadar I felt I could thoroughly trust, was my first one at Parewah, an old Rajpoot, called Kassee Rai.  He was a fine, ruddy-faced, white-haired old man, as independent and straightforward an old farmer as you could meet anywhere, and I never had reason to regret taking his advice on any matter.  I never found him out in a lie, or in a dishonest or underhand action.  Though over seventy years of age he was upright as a dart.  He could not keep up with me when we went out riding over the fields, but he would be out the whole day over the lands, and was always the first at his work in the morning and the last to leave off at night.  The ryots all loved him, and would do anything for him; and when poor old Kassee died, the third year he had been under me, I felt as if an old friend had gone.  I never spoke an angry word to him, and I never had a fault to find with him.

When the hoeing has been finished in zeraat and zillah, and all the upturned soil battened down by the hengha, the next thing is to commence the ploughing.  Your ploughmen are mostly low caste men—­Doosadhs, Churnars, Moosahurs, Gwallahs, et hoc genus omne.  The Indian plough, so like a big misshapen wooden pickaxe, has often been described.  It however turns up the light soft soil very well considering its pretensions, and those made in the factory workshops are generally heavier and sharper than the ordinary village plough.  Our bullocks too, being strong and well fed, the ploughing in the zeraats is generally good.

The ploughing is immediately followed up by the hengha, which again triturates and breaks up the clods, rolls the sticks, leaves, and grass roots together, brings the refuse and dirt to the surface, and again levels the soil, and prevents the wind from taking away the moisture.  The land now looks fine and fresh and level, but very dirty.  A host of coolies are put on the fields with small sticks in their hands.  All the Dangur women and children are there, with men, women, and children of all the poorest classes from the villages round, whom the attractions of wages or the exertions of headmen Tokedars and Zillahdars have brought together to earn their daily bread.  With the sticks they beat and break up every clod, leaving not one behind the size of a walnut.  They collect all the refuse, weeds, and dirt, which are heaped up and burnt on the field, and so they go on till the zeraats look as clean as a nobleman’s garden, and you would think that surely this must satisfy the fastidious eye of the planter.  But no, our work is not half begun yet.