to extract all the colour from them, and the cake-house boys run to and fro between the cutting-table and the cake-house with batches of cakes on their heads, borne on boards, like a baker taking his hot rolls from the oven, or like a busy swarm of ants taking the spoil of the granary to their forest haunt.  Everywhere there is a confused jumble of sounds.  The plash of water, the clank of machinery, the creaking of wheels, the roaring of the furnaces, mingle with the shouts, cries, and yells of the excited coolies; the vituperations of the drivers as some terrified or obstinate bullock plunges madly about; the objurgations of the ‘mates’ as some lazy fellow eases his stroke in the beating vats; the cracking of whips as the bullocks tear round the circle where the Persian wheel creaks and rumbles in the damp, dilapidated wheel-house; the-dripping buckets revolving clumsily on the drum, the arriving and departing carts; the clang of the anvil, as the blacksmith and his men hammer away at some huge screw which has been bent; the hurrying crowds of cartmen and loaders with their burdens of fresh green plant or dripping refuse;—­form such a medley of sights and sounds as I have never seen equalled in any other industry.

The planter has to be here, there, and everywhere.  He sends carts to this village or to that, according as the crop ripens.  Coolies must be counted and paid daily.  The stubble must be ploughed to give the plant a start for the second growth whenever the weather will admit of it.  Reports have to be sent to the agents and owners.  The boiling must be narrowly watched, as also the beating and the straining.  He has a large staff of native assistants, but if his mahye is to be successful, his eye must be over all.  It is an anxious time, but the constant work is grateful, and when the produce is good, and everything working smoothly, it is perhaps the most enjoyable time of the whole year.  Is it nothing to see the crop, on which so much care has been expended, which you have watched day by day through all the vicissitudes of the season, through drought, and flood, and blight; is it nothing to see it safely harvested, and your shelves filling day by day with fine sound cakes, the representatives of wealth, that will fill your pockets with commission, and build up your name as a careful and painstaking planter?

‘What’s your produce?’ is now the first query at this season, when planters meet.  Calculations are made daily, nay hourly, to see how much is being got per beegah, or how much per vat.  The presses are calculated to weigh so much.  Some days you will get a press a vat, some days it will mount up to two presses a vat, and at other times it will recede to half a press a vat, or even less.  Cold wet weather reduces the produce.  Warm sunny weather will send it up again.  Short stunted plant from poor lands will often reduce your average per acre, to be again sent up as fresh, hardy, leafy plant comes in from some favourite village, where you have new and fertile lands, or where the plant from the rich zeraats laden with broad strong leaf is tumbled into the loading vat.