special regard to the view.  If you look closely when the people go to work you will see that a household spreads itself over plots, maybe, a quarter of a mile apart.  A revenue map of a village shows that this scatteration is apparently designed, but the reason is not given.  One thing at least is certain.  The assessment of these patches can be no light piece of work—­just the thing, in fact, that would give employment to a large number of small and variegated Government officials, any one of whom, assuming that he was of an Oriental cast of mind, might make the cultivator’s life interesting.  I remember now—­a second-time-seen place brings back things that were altogether buried—­seeing three years ago the pile of Government papers required in the case of one farm.  They were many and systematic, but the interesting thing about them was the amount of work that they must have furnished to those who were neither cultivators nor Treasury officials.

If one knew Japanese, one could collogue with that gentleman in the straw-hat and the blue loincloth who is chopping within a sixteenth of an inch of his naked toes with the father and mother of all weed-spuds.  His version of local taxation might be inaccurate, but it would sure to be picturesque.  Failing his evidence, be pleased to accept two or three things that may or may not be facts of general application.  They differ in a measure from statements in the books.  The present land-tax is nominally 2-1/2 per cent, payable in cash on a three, or as some say a five, yearly settlement.  But, according to certain officials, there has been no settlement since 1875.  Land lying fallow for a season pays the same tax as land in cultivation, unless it is unproductive through flood or calamity (read earthquake here).  The Government tax is calculated on the capital value of the land, taking a measure of about 11,000 square feet or a quarter of an acre as the unit.

Now, one of the ways of getting at the capital value of the land is to see what the railways have paid for it.  The very best rice land, taking the Japanese dollar at three shillings, is about L65:10s per acre.  Unirrigated land for vegetable growing is something over L9:12s., and forest L2:11s.  As these are railway rates, they may be fairly held to cover large areas.  In private sales the prices may reasonably be higher.

It is to be remembered that some of the very best rice land will bear two crops of rice in the year.  Most soil will bear two crops, the first being millet, rape, vegetables, and so on, sown on dry soil and ripening at the end of May.  Then the ground is at once prepared for the wet crop, to be harvested in October or thereabouts.  Land-tax is payable in two instalments.  Rice land pays between the 1st November and the middle of December and the 1st January and the last of February.  Other land pays between July and August and September and December.  Let us see what the average yield is.  The gentleman in the sun-hat and the loin-cloth