| caption: |
land ownership; rice cultivation; fallow land; yams; |
| text: |
But to return to the Koupooees, the mountain-land around the village, within certain fixed bounds, is usually the property of the village. This they cultivate with rice in elevations suited to it, and with other crops in situations unfitted for that species of grain. The spot cultivated this year, is not again cultivated for the next ten years; it having been found that that space of time is required for the formation of a cultivable soil by the decay of the vegetable matter that again springs upon it. The chief crop is rice, but the produce is very (45) uncertain, both from the vicissitudes of weather, and the differing richness of the soil, which they must of necessity cultivate in their ten years' rotation. As, for instance, is the case with Nongba, when by rotation their cultivation falls upon the South side of the village, they reap but little, and support themselves principally that year, on wild yams. This root, a beneficent Providence has so diffused throughout these mountains, that no native of them able to dig them up, can starve. |
