The healthy are 'indentured'-- in plain English, apprenticed- -for five years, and distributed among the estates which have applied for them.

Husbands and wives are not allowed to be separated, nor are children under fifteen parted from their parents or natural protectors.

They are expected by the law to work for 280 days in the year, nine hours a day; and receive the same wages as the free labourers: but for this system task-work is by consent universally substituted; and (as in the case of an English apprentice) the law, by various provisions, at once punishes them for wilful idleness, and protects them from tyranny or fraud on the part of their employers.

Till the last two years the newcomers received their wages entirely in money.

But it was found better to give them for the first year (and now for the two first years) part payment in daily rations: a pound of rice, four ounces of dholl (a kind of pea), an ounce of coconut oil or ghee, and two ounces of sugar to each adult; and half the same to each child between five and ten years old.
This plan has been found necessary, in order to protect the Coolies both from themselves and from each other.